This article originally appeared in the January-February 2000 issue of the Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children. Grassroots Snapshots is a new feature that will profile efforts of small, local organizations around the state to make a difference for children and families.

Grassroots Snapshot

Santa Clara County: Latina child care providers win Prop. 10 meetings in Spanish

By Melia Franklin

When family child care provider Julie Guillen attended Santa Clara County's Prop. 10 kick-off event last June, she and her Spanish-speaking colleagues felt a little out of place. For one thing, the all-day meeting was held on a Tuesday, when few other child care providers could attend; for another, it was conducted in English. "Out of 300 people, only about 10 were Hispanic," she recalls.

As president of a San Jose-based Latina child care provider association, Proveedoras Latinas Unidas (PLU), Guillen felt that Santa Clara's Spanish-speaking community needed its own Prop. 10 forum, in its own language. "They say [Prop. 10 planning] is for the whole community," says Guillen. "We [Latinos] are part of Santa Clara County."

Guillen and the officers of PLU wrote to Santa Clara County Supervisor Blanca Alvarado, asking her to support a similar, full-day Prop. 10 meeting for the Spanish-speaking community. Alvarado had created the Santa Clara County Early Childhood Development Collaborative, a consortium of public and private agencies charged with developing the Prop. 10 plan.

At first, reports Guillen, they got "no response" from Alvarado's office. Then, at PLU's first anniversary event, Guillen publicly called on the county to sponsor a Spanish-language Prop. 10 meeting, held on a weekend, with food and child care provided. The head of the county's Department of Social Services was in the audience. Within days, the group had a meeting with Jolene Smith, project manager of the collaborative.

"It was very hard to convince her to have the meeting for Hispanics," says Guillen. Smith told them the collaborative had already planned to conduct smaller-scale community meetings in Spanish, Vietnamese, and Tagalog, and argued that it wouldn't be "fiscally responsible" to hold a full-day meeting for each group, according to staff coordinator Kate Welty.

Guillen threatened to "go home and call the media that night" and challenge the fairness of the Prop. 10 process if their demands weren't met.

The pressure brought results. The collaborative agreed to grant the PLU $15,000 to plan a full-day, Spanish-language meeting on Saturday, November 13. The county's Department of Social Services later contributed another $5,000.

PLU teamed with Head Start and other community agencies to reach out to churches, social clubs, and other venues and brought out nearly 300 people from the Latino community to learn about Prop. 10 and share their input. Families received breakfast and lunch, as well as free, on-site child care for 100 children. Supervisor Blanca Alvarado gave the welcome address-in Spanish.

Now Santa Clara's Vietnamese community has formed a group to plan a full-day, Vietnamese-language Prop. 10 event.

Ultimately, said Welty, the event was a "fabulous example of community partnership" which should be replicated by other counties. "I don't think there is a Prop. 10 group in this state that doesn't want to effectively reach out to diverse communities," she said. Having community-based groups plan their own events "is a tremendously good strategy. They have the connections and links to the community and they've got the cultural awareness and understanding."