... among the most deprived

citizens in American society.'

n December 14, 1970, the Ford Foundation announced a grant of $225,000 to the Center for Community Change to help finance the operation of seven National Farm Workers Service Centers and to permit NFWSC to open additional centers in the west and southwest

Inc.

This latest grant, generated by CCC, will bring counseling, legal, health and welfare services offered by NFWSC to added thousands of farm workers in California, Arizona and Texas

It is no secret that farm workers are among the most deprived citizens in American society. They are often denied the protection of some of the nation's most basic laws. welfare, unemployment insurance, Medicaid. (In Kern County, California, where Delano is located, even Food Stamps are not available to the poor")

Centered in Delano, the organization operates a credit union, a cooperative (which runs a discount service station and a car repair shop), a newly-constructed health clinic (which employs three nurses and three assistants and has at its disposal the help of volunteer physicians), a retirement village for aged Filipino farm workers, a legal services project and a general counseling program.

It has also conducted an extensive training program -many hundreds of farm workers have been "graduated in office and management work, community counseling and organizing skills.

The Center's assistance to NFWSC has been continuous and intensive. Proposal writing, generating financial support (all from private sources no government funds are involved), legal services, design and, with the help of local volunteers, construction of the service station and auto repair shop as well as the medical clinic - all of these have been carried out by CCC.

The 15 service centers now employ 30 persons who have the help of scores of volunteers at the various sites.

Through these activities, the National Farm Workers' Service Centers organization hopes to achieve its ultimate goal: to make farm workers economically independent through the process of self-determination.

United Farm Workers

Cooperative

n early spring, 1971, the United Farm Workers Medical Center will open in Toppenish, Washington. To the poverty-ridden Chicano community of the rich Yakima Valley of Washington State, it will be the realization of a dream that, as late as a year ago, seemed almost impossible of fulfillment.

The center will be controlled by farm workers of the valley who will vote into office a majority of the members of the policy board.

It was this notion that the recipients of the health services control policy rather than the suppliers of the services-which threatened to frustrate the efforts of the United Farm Workers Cooperative, the sponsoring agency, to get the funds from the Federal government

The Center for Community Change was intimately involved in every aspect of the plan from its inception.

Finding resources, drafting proposals to get funds, seemingly endless negotiations with regional and national officials of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, building widespread community support, overcoming opposition of the local power structure, intervening on behalf of the project with public officials on the West Coast and in Washington, D.C.- all of these functions were carried out by representatives of the Center.

The United Farm Workers Cooperative, founded in 1967, first set up a community-owned retail grocery store In competition with the giant food chains in the area, its sales grew steadily from $500 to more than $23,000 a week as 1970 ended.

UFWC, which will be responsible for running the health center, operates programs with classroom instruction and on-the-job training for people who will work in the health complex and maintains a service center to meet the day-to-day needs of the valley's farm workers

Its plans are far-ranging a company to train and

hire the unemploved in making future, a corporation to bud on income housing for the poor of the valev a jega services program a so controled by the comm

How soon LFAC w be abue opens new buse nesses and service operations moonsble to predict

But there are those in the valey - the 7.000 who w have health care never before ava able to them at fees they can then or have fre • they havent the the people who have made the grocery store a money success, those who have had counseling and advice from

This is the rea. San Francisco to the Fipino grant, the As an who comes to the storied and of opportunity, the city by the bay.

San Francisco as is true of all cities, Ives off its minorities The hard work is done by these the lowest wages paid to them only the most d lapidated housing open to them

At the bottom of the minority scale in San Francisco are the F pnos The average Fpino there has a median income barely more than $3,000 annually and in a community which over the years has had the highest prices on its goods and services of any in the nation

In every category-education, ncome even funds from government which are ostensibly designed to help the poor the F pinos are last

That's why the United Filip no Association was organized UFA org nally began as a service center, to counsel people in the community. to give advice on problems dea ng with the harsh immigration requ.rements, with getting health care educational opportunibes. jobs welfare entitlement

The problems were staggering. Filipinos were spread

across the face of the city. There was no ghetto in the geographic sense. There was no one place aside from a small barber shop where information on relatives still in the islands could be had, where advice could be received

So UFA started, began to negotiate with the agencies, public and private, which controlled the lives of the Filipinos Jobs, housing, civil rights all of these became UFA's problems.

Then came the announced closing of the International Hotel. This hostelry, an ancient, three-story walkup, housed scores of elderly, indigent Filipinos who had spent their lives on the farms and in the vineyards of California Now it was to be torn down to make way for a parking lot

It was at this point, at the request of U'FA, that the Center for Community Change became involved. CCC, through its executive office and legal and field services divisions, entered protracted negotiations to postpone the razing of the hotel and, at the same time, to find more adequate quarters for those who were to be dispossessed.

The postponement was obtained Another hotel was located and, in the latter part of 1970, negotiations begun on its purchase This, for the Center, has meant direct financial aid and personal intervention on behalf of the United Filipino Association with the city and Federal housing authorities, the owners of the hotel and with private banks in the bay area.

The hotel, if negotiations are successful, will provide decent living quarters for the elderly Filipino men and, more important in the long run, become the center of all Filipino activity in San Francisco.

From such a community-controlled facility can be launched the housing, training and economic development activities that will make the Filipino community independent, able to participate more fully in the life of

the city

zation of Chicanos in San Antonio which has been affiliated with the Center for Community Change since 1969.

None of the field workers is a professional. All were given training under a Labor Department grant, generated with the assistance of the Center. The program itself is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and offers, in MAUC's terms, a "humanistic approach to people and their problems as opposed to the cold, disengaged clinical approach."

The program, which was begun in September of 1970, employs in addition to the field personnel, a program director, a full-time nurse, a youth coordinater and a psychiatrist on a part-time basis. And of course, it has the back-up support of a general hospital and its staff. The mental health project is only the most recent of a number of programs started by MAUC

A community-controlled, non-profit organization, MAUC has created an urban development division (which covers economic development, housing and manpower training), a fiscal and management section and a field services branch which operates, in addition to the mental health program, an experimental education program. This last division is now developing two new projects a cooperative grocery store and "Food for All," which will make available to the poor of the city the benefits of the Food Stamp, hot lunch and surplus commodity programs.

The Center in 1970 made a small grant to the Unity Council and provided extensive technical assistance for MAUC's economic projects-run by a MAUC-controlled holding company and including a fast-food franchise, a building maintenance service and soon, a meat processing plant and in the development of a housing plan. MAUC has a staff of 40 persons. MAUC-owned enterprises will employ, by mid-1971, some 125 persons Profits from these operations will permit the organization to expand its technical assistance to neighborhood clubs of San Antonio Chicanos and to develop its new housing program.

During the year, MAUC, with assistance from CCC, generated more than $350,000 in government and private grants and loans.

Watts

Labor Community Action Committee

er

arly in January, 1971, officers of the Center for Community Change and the Watts Labor Community Action Committee told reporters at a Washington news conference of the formation of a new "land bank" fund which would be used to develop housing for the poor in Watts. The amount of the fund $2.75 million.

A far cry from any report on WLCAC that would have been made five and a half years ago. Then, the group had a treasury of slightly more than $5, few members and little apparent future.

To make matters more difficult, shortly after WLCAC was organized-its early goal was to beautify the community-the first major urban riot in America in more than a generation erupted.

The fires and violence are not forgotten in today's Watts. But from the holocaust has come a community in which for the first time, there is a sense of purpose, a new hope

The success story in Watts has been a project engineered jointly by the Watts committee and the Center for Community Change. The Center, since its founding, has worked on an intensive basis with WLCAC in virtually every new project considered or executed

CCC has helped design, package and deliver programs on economic development, housing and manpower training It has negotiated and intervened with public and private institutions on behalf of WLCAC. And the results, for WLCAC, for CCC and for the people of the community, have been most rewarding.

Watts is a vast, flat, slum-pocked area in south central Los Angeles. Its unemployment rates are double those for the rest of the city. Inhabited almost entirely by Blacks, Watts has few job-producing industries or businesses, very little by way of public services, overcrowded schools, the ever-present problem of narcotic addiction and a high rate of street crime

The creation of jobs and the formation of capital have been the major objectives of WLCAC. In pursuit of these goals, WLCAC has grown phenomenally.

It developed "vest pocket neighborhood parks,

using land burned out in the riot.

It led the successful campaign to have a major health

facility built in Watts. (The closest general hospital is 14 miles distant). Late in 1971, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital will open its doors in Watts. More than 2,000 jobs will be available for the people of Watts, many of them trained for the work by WLCAC programs.

WLCAC itself is a private, non-profit corporation. Its functions are fiscal management, manpower training, transportation, the operation of a number of Federallyfinanced work-related programs including the Urban Residential Education Center at Saugus, California, and the general administration of two subsidiary corporations.

Saugus, as the UREC is called, is a vast 630-acre facility 35 miles north of Los Angeles. Acquired from the city, the center serves a number of purposes. a training site (it teaches culinary arts, horticulture, woodwork, auto repair, secretarial work, stationary engineering as well as academic programs), food producer (Saugus supplies fresh vegetables and soon will provide poultry and eggs to WLCAC-controlled supermarkets and other retail outlets), and a recreation center.

The committee also operates two service stations as training centers for the youth of the area Other training activities are carried out in the Elite Supermarket (stock clerks, cashiers and store management), a newly-opened restaurant (cooking and waitress training), landscaping and beautification programs in Watts, and in the central offices of WLCAC itself where trainees are instructed in office techniques and skills.

Then there is the credit union, the transportation service for people who work outside of the area as well as for senior citizens, and on the drawing boards, a government-funded child care center

One of WLCAC's subsidiary corporations is the Greater Watts Development Corporation, a non-profit, total service contractor which performs demolition, construction, electrical and plumbing work. Under a state contract, this firm has moved more than two dozen homes that stood in the way of airport expansion from

60-174 O 72 pt. 1 - 12