Mothers of Invention Work a Miracle in Boyle Heights
Earlier this month, a consortium of big businesses announced an unprecedented collaboration on a coast-to-coast network of child-care services for employees. This is a great development for people who work for companies such as IBM and AT&T.; But I doubt many of the mothers at the Dolores Mission Women’s Cooperative heard the news.
They’ve been too busy getting ready for the opening of their own unprecedented collaboration: a day-care center built from the proceeds of garage sales, raffles, private and public grants, a priest’s game-show winnings and an unflagging determination to bring a dream to life.
In the drab East L.A. complex that is the Dolores Mission, the new child-care center stands out like a rainbow against the thunderheads. It’s a brilliant yellow and orange, surrounded by a turquoise fence. Decorative tiles, painted by the children who will fill the place, are embedded at regular intervals around the exterior walls.
The center will be fancier than the structures around it: it will have air conditioning (no other building in the complex does), custom cabinets, a fully equipped kitchen, a washer and dryer. Compared to the place in which the kids are cared for now, it’ll be like a piece of Beverly Hills in Boyle Heights.
Until they move in September, the children will continue to spend their time in the basement multipurpose room of the church school across the street. Their little day-care area is located on the small performance stage at one end of the room. The stage is about four feet off the floor, and the outer edge has been fenced to prevent wayward toddlers from tumbling off the edge. You wouldn’t exactly call it ideal space for up to 30 children. You might even call it illegal. Because, technically, that’s what it is.
Or, as Father Thomas Smolich says with classic understatement: “All the things you’d want in a child-care center aren’t there.”
No one is sure, exactly, who came up with the idea to build the center. It was just one of those big ideas that seemed impossible but took hold and, thanks to a succession of minor miracles, became a reality.
The original day-care facility was established in 1988 for children 3 to 5. The church was trying to help some of its parishioners receive immigration amnesty. Those who qualified had to show proof of employment. Many of the parish’s single mothers were on county assistance. Without day-care, they could not seek work. Without work, no amnesty. Thus was the day-care center born.
Two years ago, Father Tom, who runs the mission’s outreach programs, appeared as a contestant on “Jeopardy.” He lost, but was called back after the show’s staff realized the winner had given a wrong answer. The second time around, Father Tom won nearly $40,000, and after taxes, donated about $35,000 to the day-care center building fund.
The mothers first envisioned a trailer, sitting on the little plot of land where the new center stands. Then, as they raised money, they raised their sights: perhaps a modest little something in cinder block?
But after Smolich won big on TV--and was featured in People--a contractor came forward to volunteer his services. The cooperative secured grants from half a dozen foundations and the state and federal governments. Nearly 20 local teen-agers were hired to help with construction. With nearly $200,000 they built something that should have cost at least $300,000. Now the mothers and their children have a wood-frame stuccoed building with cathedral ceilings and a whole lot of style.
Some professional child-care providers offered to step in and run the center, too, but that was out of the question: “If we had done that, the moms could not have been involved,” said Father Tom.
Without the moms, there would be no center.
This, above all, is the story of the mothers. Natives of Mexico and Central America, they are poor, mostly single--and driven. Through their board of directors and various committees, they have made all the important decisions about the new center.
Lupe Avila, 38, came to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 1979. She started the original day-care program and has studied child development at East Los Angeles College in order to become director of the new center. She is nearly breathless with excitement just talking about it: “One year ago, we had only the walls. Now, every day, they put in something else. The day we spent $9,000 on furniture, I could not sleep. I’m so excited! It’s like a dream every day when I am going there.”
All the co-op mothers are encouraged to take child development classes, and Father Tom managed to find money for an East Los Angeles College instructor to come to Dolores Mission to teach the women in Spanish.
The instructor, Chris Peralta, has been most impressed by her students.
“They are so motivated,” she says. “A lot of these women tried to go to East L.A. College and because of lack of English, they could not pass their classes. When classes were offered in Spanish, they were elated because they knew they could do it. After all, the concepts are the same in every language.”
Once the women complete their units, they’ll receive child-development certificates and will be able to seek work at other centers. Their child-care needs will be met by the center, which charges as little as $5 a week. (“The center will never be self-sufficient,” says Father Tom, “but we never intended it to be.”)
The women’s cooperative has also developed a Leadership Development Program, which offers classes in handling money, looking for jobs, community activism, health, sexuality and relationships.
“I’ve learned to be a better single mother,” says Angela Gutierrez, 24, who has taken the leadership courses and will be among the first to earn her child-development certificate. In December, she’ll give up her day-care job at Dolores Mission to seek an outside, and presumably higher-paying, job.
Maria Ayala, president of the mother’s group, says the center is much bigger than it seems: “It’s a symbol of the whole community working together. It really shows that if you give the power to where it belongs, if you let the mothers do what they think is best, if you let them make the choices and call the shots, something really good can come out of it. If we could create a building where there was nothing before, you feel like you can accomplish anything.”
The mothers of Dolores Mission may not have the clout or resources of IBM or AT&T;, but they have something just as important: determination and a whole lot of heart.
