| Date: | Fri, 4 Aug 2000 19:28:06 -0700 |
| To: | "MHOCCA List" <mhocca@egroups.com> |
| From: | "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com> |
| Subject: | [MHOCCA] South County meeting |
| Cc: | Almalicia Castillo |
The
RFP for
the Santa Clara self-help centers is currently
being signed off on by the County Attorney. When it is
finalized, there will be a bid period, then a bidder’s
conference where the clients get to ask questions. Meanwhile
the South County clients are organizing.Morgan Hill and Gilroy are part of the core Mexican land grant area which crosses county lines and includes Watsonville and Castroville (Santa Cruz Co.), Morgan Hill and Gilroy (Santa Clara Co.), Salinas (Monterey Co.) and San Juan Bautista (San Benito Co.) The South County organizing is of course multinational but it is being done in a way that is responsible to the dominant Chicano culture of the area.
There were 11-12 of us at the meeting, including Barry and Almalicia who are experienced client activists who work p/t for County M.H. as community workers. We met in a public park in Morgan Hill. This work is a continuation of ongoing work that is nearly a decade old, that is now being integrated into a county-wide self-help organizing process. Jose Rangel from Gilroy (a former member of the Network Board) led the meeting. We are developing a good core group.
We picked people to represent the clients at the forthcoming bidder’s conference. We also discussed setting up a transitional self-help process (perhaps, a support group) to get people better prepared for the later stages of the process. And we decided to see if we could plan out a group visit to Interlink, the Santa Rosa self-help center.
It is a dream that self-help that is in sync with the Chicano culture will come to South County. But this dream is on the verge of being realized.
Respectfully
Andrew Phelps