Our flagship project, The Community Wellness Project, provides a wide array of culturally-and-linguistically competent wrap around services for low-income and for Latino families who need assistance in addressing short-term crisis needs, and who deserve self-sufficiency programs developed and implemented to address the root causes of poverty.

 

 

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We believe that the efficacy of programs and services are highest when cultural-and-linguistic competencies are incorporated into the delivery model and families feel comfortable, empowered, and supported in working towards self-sufficiency.

We have learned through first-hand experience that an investment spent in addressing the root causes of poverty will build stronger communities and contribute to cost-saving measures in the long term with respect to decreased levels of state-wide social service needs, crime rates, substance abuse, domestic violence, and high school completion rates.

Need for Our Program

The state of health and social wellbeing of Oregon’s Latino population remains negative, overall, according to the 2010 Oregon Progress Board Race & Ethnicity Report.  According to this report, Latino Oregonians remain more likely than Latinos elsewhere in this country to live in poverty.  Furthermore, in other benchmark areas such as high school completion and homeownership rates, Latinos lag significantly behind their counterparts, in some cases by as much as 20 percentage points.  Additional root causes to the specific barriers and needs our Latino and immigrant clients experience in Marion and Polk Counties include:

  • Language and Cultural Barriers: Our clients and their families are mainly Spanish-speakers with limited English proficiency.  They often access our support services because they face linguistic and cultural barriers when attempting to interact with necessary services, or in being part of general community life.
  • Absence of Safety Net: Our Latino and immigrant clients come from societies rich in social capital with deep networks of kinship (through family relations and camaraderie).  Our clients reach out to us when these networks are not equipped to provide the interventions or assistance they need – and often when other resources don’t meet their needs because of language or cultural barriers.
  • Exclusion from Formal Economy: A large segment of the Latino and Immigrant community operates as an informal yet vital part of our region’s economy; they are, thus, easy prey to opportunistic service providers and unscrupulous businesses.  Unfortunately, many low- and moderate-income people, including Latinos, rely on these predatory businesses for various basic needs such as legal advice and emergency loans— services which often result in further economic, legal and psychological stress.  Our clients are also easy prey to abuse at the hand of business owners and of criminal elements in our community that take advantage of fear and helplessness to keep them from exercising their rights.

These root causes contribute to pushing many of our clients into homelessness, hunger and other unsafe and unhealthy situations that destabilize families and communities.

Additional research demonstrates that youth in the mid-Willamette Valley express strong sentiments of being ostracized by mainstream community.  This is particularly true for youth from minority communities.  Research conducted by the Oregon Youth Authority demonstrates that lower socioeconomic status, lack of preventative social services, and a lack of culturally appropriate resources, placements and services as contributing factors to the over-representation of youth of color in Oregon’s Juvenile Justice System.

In Marion County alone, there is a tremendous lack of prevention and intervention programs that are culturally-and-linguistically appropriate for youth and designed to encompass the involvement of the entire family in the service process.  This is the exact need that Mano a Mano Family Center is uniquely positioned to address.  Because of our trusted community recognition, our services and programs are sought out and accessible by community members resulting in a willingness to participate in our programs and services which in turn, help us to fulfill our mission of building stronger families and stronger communities.