Making A Difference in Your Community : Guadalupe Center Helps Needy Latinos

When it started in 1948 out of a donation from prominent Canoga Park property owner Mary Logan Orcutt, the Guadalupe Center was intended to offer Latino migrant workers in the community something of a “country club” feeling, with recreational opportunities including a swimming pool.

The swimming pool has been closed for years and today, the Guadalupe Center, run by Catholic Charities, is where 76-year-old Frank Romero and his wife, Maria, volunteer three mornings a week.

The Guadalupe Center offers an emergency food pantry on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, a thrift store and a senior nutrition program and serves as a meeting place for community groups, including Project Amigo and Project Amiga, which offer young people alternatives to gangs, drugs and crime.

Frank Romero handles applications for aid, and Maria helps hand out food.

“I like to catch them in their lies,” Frank Romero said.

A fraudulent claim is the exception. However, after Romero caught one woman collecting aid by hiding her husband’s profitable work as a contractor, he hired the man to fix his wall damaged by the earthquake.

For much of its history, the center has focused on offering youth activities, but in recent years it has been changing to provide a broad range of social services for the community, said Anastasia Rose, the center’s director for a year and a half.

“I think there would be more kids getting in trouble with the law” without the center, said Josephina Juarez, a parent active in the youth programs who also helps answer the phone in the Guadalupe Center.

Each Christmas, the Guadalupe Center runs an Adopt-A-Family program that distributes toys, food and help to about 300 needy families. Planning for that program begins in October. The center runs a Thanksgiving food program and a Christmas party, which had 500 children last year.

Volunteers answering the phones and working the front desk must speak both English and Spanish. They are also needed to help with fund raising, coaching sports teams, sorting clothing and other donated items, handling word processing, marketing and organizing a dinner dance in March.

The center also needs help for a cleanup day Sept. 17. For more information, call Rose at (818) 340-2050.

Loaves and Fishes, a food bank also affiliated with Catholic Charities, needs volunteers to help with bagging groceries, sorting donated clothing and interviewing poor and homeless clients when they come in asking for help. Bilingual volunteers are especially needed. Loaves and Fishes, open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., is at 14525 Delano St., Van Nuys. To volunteer, call Barbara Ausburn, director of volunteers, at (818) 997-0943. Loaves and Fishes also operates at the Guadalupe Center in Canoga Park.

Visually Handicapped Adults of the Valley, a school for blind or visually impaired people in the San Fernando Valley, needs volunteers to help in the kitchen, hand out lunches and do other general volunteer work. They also need someone to teach a typing class on Tuesdays. The group, founded about 20 years ago, is open on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. They are looking especially for volunteers willing to make a commitment to show up once a week. The school is at 6565 Vesper Ave., Van Nuys. To volunteer, contact Helene Taber at (818) 988-2740.

The Los Angeles County Branch of the Orton Dyslexia Society in Studio City is looking for volunteers, preferably with a teaching background, for a low-cost reading clinic run by the Ryan Dyslexia Center. Volunteers would teach adults with dyslexia or related learning disabilities two hours a week in the evenings. Training will be provided. The Ryan Dyslexia Center is also looking for students for its literacy program. Please call Monday or Thursday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. or leave a message at (818) 506-8866.

Getting Involved is a weekly listing of volunteering opportunities. Please address prospective listings to Getting Involved, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, 91311. Or fax them to (818) 772-3338.