Patricia Navarrete-Davids

Patricia Navarrete-Davids, a California native from East Los Angeles, joined this effort in 1992 as Administrator of all programs at the Dolores Mission Women's Cooperative.As a young UC Berkeley liberal arts graduate, she had met Father Tom in 1987 when they were both on a United Way commission to evaluate the possible impacts of the new immigration law.Patricia had interesting work experiences: her academic focus on romance languages led to a year in France as a staff member of a student employment agency.She worked in Los Angeles on multi-ethnic relationships through United Way's Latino, African American and Asian/Pacific Islander Advisory Councils.She was a Peace Corps volunteer, posted to the Comoro Islands, a French-speaking, Islamic moderate country off the coast of Mozambique.Now proficient in French, Swahili, and Arabic, Patricia taught English as a foreign language.Following the completion of her assignment, she returned to Los Angeles to begin married life and to look for stateside strategies to contribute to community.She received a call from another former member of the United Way commission who reported that Father Tom was ready to open a child-care facility (Lupe's site) and needed a talented person to run the program that would manage it and any other community-based ventures connected with it."Of all the things I knew", says Patricia, "I knew nothing about child care."But she "loved what La Cooperativa symbolized and embraced this new challenge."

Patricia viewed her skills as organizational.As she perceived it, her role at La Cooperativa was to manage the growth of the program.Among her tasks were to:

Maintain high standards for the entire program;
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For those who are considering expanding an existing service through program development and site expansion, Patricia offers the following recommendations
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Patricia admits that she was "shortsighted" due to her relative lack of familiarity with building development.She did not initially ask for an extensive environmental assessment of the site.
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Patricia believes that when the service is so vital to the community many groups will want to contribute to it.
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As co-fellows of Eureka Communities, Patricia and Lupe had opportunity to take a study trip to an organization from which she could learn ways to further enhance their program.Calvary Bilingual Multicultural Center in Washington, DC has some similarities to the DMWC.It is located in Mount Pleasant, a largely Latino, Spanish-speaking community with a variety of service needs.Patricia and Lupe visited the program in 1995.They had slightly different learning goals, but were both "amazed at the program similarities".At Calvary, a larger physical plant than her preschool, Lupe was excited by ways that the multi-service attended to the many needs of its community of recent immigrants and came away with some new ways to think about structuring child care at DWMC.Patricia marveled at the "United Nations of cultures, the fact that there was no question but that all staff would be Spanish/English bilingual, and the feeling that we were all part of one family.They treated us royally."She was able to take away the following lessons:

Remake what exists Particularly when thinking about new facilities, it may be important to restore existing buildings that have a history and importance to the community.At Calvary, Patricia was "impressed by their plans to gut and renovate an old building to make it useful to the community";

Acknowledge what you have done well As impressed as she was with Calvary she realized that she felt "Validated by the presence of successful others, no more or no less prepared than we, to do work necessary to the community";

Learn from others Patricia thinks it important to take the opportunity to learn from the successes and failures of other groups.She was excited about the ability to see an organization with an older history that was about to embark on a set of expanded and comprehensive services that were in line with her dreams for La Cooperativa, She began to consider the importance of including in La Cooperativa's expanded services such things as a resume bank for job seekers and culturally appropriate prenatal consultation services and a mental health wellness program that offers youth violence prevention strategies and domestic violence intervention and treatment program.

Pat Navarrete-Davids, AdministratorPhone: (323) 881-0000 * Fax: (323) 881-1771dmwc@proyectopastoral.org