Bienestar
https://www.comiteaz.com/staff.html
About Comite de Bien Estar Inc.
Comité works to empower Mexican-Americans and new immigrants to help them overcome the many barriers they face, including very low wages, little access to conventional financing and limited political representation. Founded by farm workers in 1977 and incorporated in 1981, Comité is a membership non-profit that focuses on helping members build assets and strengthen the whole community. Four years after it started by pooling member savings, Comité purchased its first hundred acres for development for $1.4 million.
"I've been here since 1949. There were only five houses then. Together we've made a lot of things happen. Young people have opportunities now."
-
Delores Ybarra
Comité is located in San Luis, Arizona. San Luis, a town of about 19,000 in Yuma County in the southwestern corner of the state where agriculture is the major industry. The town is just across the river from California and the border from San Luis de Colorado in Mexico, a city of 300,000, many of whom work in multinational maquiladoras. During the height of the Yuma harvesting season, 30,000 to 40,000 Mexican farm workers cross the border each day.
Over and above the 111 children and their parents that Comité serves with center day care; the public schools that its land development makes possible; the training it provides for young people and adults; the work ethic it cultivates; the skills it imparts to entire families building self-help housing; and its culture and reaction activities for youth - Comité also helps more than 275 low income women deliver home day care to up to six children each by providing them with:
Training in nutrition and how to prepare nutritional meals and teach children and parents to eat them
Assistance in upgrading their homes to qualify as day care sites
Income supplements for each child served nutritional meals
Inspections to insure that they continue to receive supplements
Encouragement to improve their childcare skills and make the transition to being center providers