Outreach program works to connect Mixtec community with essential social services
By Michelle Knight knight@theacorn.com

A countywide agency charged with ensuring children enter school healthy and ready to learn, is reaching out to the linguistically isolated Mixtec community.

First 5 Ventura County is the sole sponsor of the "Puentes: Building Bridges to Ventura County's Mixtec Community" program, which operates through Oxnard's Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project, or MICOP.

The two-year, $100,000 outreach program has connected many in the Mixtec community to needed medical, educational and social services, said the project's executive director, Susan Haverland.

Haverland estimates that 20,000 of the Mixtec community live in the county while 100,000 reside in the state. Indigenous to Oaxaca, Mexico, the Mixtec generally don't speak English or Spanish but only the Mixteco language.

Many are impoverished farmworkers who are young, hardworking parents of small children in need of housing, food, healthcare and other life essentials, Haverland said.

"The Mixtec farmworkers are the poorest of the poor in Ventura County," she said.

As a result, they have a difficult time accessing basic services since few if any government offices and social service agencies have Mixteco translators on staff.

Over the last year, the program has trained about 20 Mixteco-speaking workers, promotores, to go into this community to explain educational programs and social and medical services available to them, all with the goal of enriching the lives young children so they can enter school healthy and ready to learn.

"The Mixtec population makes a valuable contribution to Ventura County agricultural economy," Haverland said. "Their children attend local schools. They are our neighbors. Helping our neighbors keep their children healthy- (it) benefits all of us."

Although Oxnard and Newbury Park each have a sizable Mixtec community, a few families live in cities throughout the county, such as Moorpark.

"Here, we don't (have a translator), and that's unfortunate," said Sandi Lane, coordinator of First 5's Family Resource Center in Moorpark.

When a Mixtec family comes in, they call on someone from the community to translate for them, Lane said.

Eighteen Family Resource Centers are located in Ventura County; most are a part of the First 5 Ventura County's Neighborhood for Learning preschools. Among the free services, available to families with infants and children up to 5yearsold regardless of income, are parenting, nutrition and English language classes and recreational programs, field trips and free dental care for children.

First 5 Ventura County is a public entity that uses funds from Proposition 10- a cigarette tax- to promote early childhood development and health programs.

For more information, visit first5ventura.org and click on "Neighborhoods for Learning."