Guadalupe Center at 25 reason to celebrate
Immokalee group feeding, clothing and educating
BY STEPHANIE WESTENDORF Florida Weekly Correspondent

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTO Graduates of the Voluntary Pre-K Program at the Guadalupe Center perform songs in Spanish and English.

As a young child, Jeanette Arvizu's family traveled around looking for work until they finally settled on Immokalee, which means "my home" in Seminole.

Today, at age 16, Arvizu serves as one of the specially selected high school tutors, teaching elementary school students in the summer through the Guadalupe Center. In return for her service, she receives wages, mentoring, college counseling, and possible scholarships. She wants to impart a feeling of worth to the children she sees, "I don't want them to feel less than what they are, than what they can become."

The Guadalupe Center of Immokalee is located on Hope Circle, an appropriate location name for an organization that has been feeding, clothing, and educating its community for years. Its mission is "breaking the cycle of poverty through education". Originally established by two nuns as a soup kitchen, the Center has since expanded to provide other essential services to Immokalee residents.

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTO Built in 2005, the Morgridge Family Education Building at the Guadalupe Center is equipped with classrooms, offices, playrooms, and a library. At left, second-graders in the summer program at the Guadalupe Center of Immokalee learn geography. Now, as part of their "Around the World" cirriculum, they are studying Italy.

And the expansions continue even today.

The new Jim Near Education Building will house a Preschool Academy and increase student population by 60 percent with eight new classrooms, a kitchen, offices, and more. The Center plans to open the first phase of this new building in the fall of 2008.

Worn walls lacking color, narrow hallways, small rooms, and large white lights make the old defunct Jim Near Building look more like a hospital than an education center. Besides the additional space, the new Jim Near wing will bring teaching jobs for locals and internships for college students. The Morgridge Family Education Building at the Guadalupe Center opened in 2005 and brought larger classrooms, infant rooms, planning areas, washers and dryers, and a library to Immokalee youth.

Desmond Barrett, director of the Early Childhood Education Program at the Guadalupe Center, beams with pride as he reveals that students in his program scored in Florida's top tier on standardized Kindergarten Readiness tests. He says while statistics show poorer students that speak English as a second language tend to have lower test scores than their peers, children educated at the Guadalupe Center have broken this stereotype.

"The majority of our clients make less than $15,000 a year…you can't use that as an excuse," Barrett said. "What you have to have is a good staff, a good model, and a good curriculum, which we have."

Progress has come with time and patience. Serving a community with a staggering number of impoverished members, more than 50 percent, has its challenges. In Immokalee there are four elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. According to chief fundraising officer of the Guadalupe Center, the teacher retention rate in these schools is low. Perhaps even lower is the student retention rate. The Guadalupe Center maintains that approximately one-half of Immokalee's students will drop out of high school. Only about a quarter of those who do graduate will continue to college.

On a tour of Immokalee, Stanley Boynton, president of the Guadalupe Center, and Phil Schneeberger, a college student and volunteer, reveal an even bleaker view of the town. Immokalee has 25,000 residents year-round and its population doubles during "season", the same time-period as the snowbird season. But these travelers are not coming for a warmer place to stay over the winter months; they come to work.

While the average income in Collier County is $32,000, in Immokalee it is $9,000, well below the federal poverty level. Many people, including families, live in small trailers with up to 15 others. Schneeberger says despite the crowded and tattered conditions, rent can be astronomical. "The prices these people pay have been quoted as high as a Manhattan high rise apartment as far as square footage." Rent can rise above $250 for one week. The prices may be comparable to a Manhattan high rise, but the amenities are not. "They basically have enough room for their beds and that's about it. To have a kitchen - that's a bonus. To have adequate plumbing, again, that's another bonus."

Some may find it perplexing that a family living below the poverty line would pay that much for housing. But the reasoning is simple. Most field workers do not have cars and living in close proximity to their jobs, accessible by labor pool pickups, means not having to walk miles to and from work. Much of the town's migrant population comes from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti. Schneeberger says, "To get here, they're going to have to go through civil strife, civil wars… getting here is an enormous struggle and once they get here they're faced with even more struggles."

All in a day's work

It begins at 4:30 in the morning. Traffic congests the small town of Immokalee as workers pack the parking lots of pickup locales, including the back of grocery stores or bakeries. Crew foremen announce how many workers they need, but only a handful are picked. The chosen few are those unlikely to "rock the boat or make waves", Schneeberger says. The ideal candidate will not complain about poor working conditions or inadequate breaks. "In a lot of ways they've won for the day because they have a chance to work."

Once out in the fields, workers pick crops, usually tomatoes, for ten to 12 hours. Schneeberger explains, "A lot of times there's no adequate water breaks. If they do get a lunch, a lot of the times their hands are dripping in pesticides while they're eating their lunch, going as fast as they can." He says there have been instances of workers poisoned from these pesticides.

Medical facilities are scant. Most emergencies are directed to Naples hospitals. Schneeberger says a number of Immokalee workers will go untreated simply because they cannot afford hospital visits.

After a long day, field pickers bring back a mere sum. Paid by piece, they earn 40 to 45 cents for every 32 pounds of tomatoes they collect. That means one worker would have to gather about two tons of tomatoes to earn $50 a day. This rate has been the standard since 1978.

As the tour passes a battered yellow complex, Boynton points out some of the worst housing in Immokalee. Schneeberger says, "People have had to hang their food by ropes so that insects and rodents don't get into it." Boynton remembers the building's appearance 50 years ago and vows things look about the same.

Back at the Performing Arts Hall in the Morgridge Family Education Building of the Guadalupe Center, recent graduates of the voluntary pre-kindergarten program hold a performance, dressed proudly in their caps and gowns. Barrett says there are 276 kids on the waiting list for the early childhood education program because of a lack of space.

"If we had another building, I know that we would fill up that waiting list again," he said.

The Guadalupe Center also holds events throughout the year to aid locals. The annual "Thanksgiving in the Park" event fed around 4,000 people last year. The Center instituted a "Back to School Shoes" program after noticing children returning to school with no shoes to wear. The Guadalupe Center also offers clothing in exchange for small optional donations, as well as a place for showers for those who find themselves homeless or without running water. The soup kitchen still runs, serving 200-300 people daily.

While the Guadalupe Center has made considerable progress, it still has substantial needs. Alicia Lindo, chief fundraising officer and acting development director, says the Center is still short $200,000. The majority of the Center's funds come from private donors, mostly from communities like Pelican Landing and Bonita Bay.

Lindo says that the majority of business and stores in Immokalee are owned by only a small number of landowners, she estimates ten or 12. She says stores often overcharge for common and essential items, like diapers, because of a lack of local competition. Immokalee does not have a wide range of stores to choose from. There is only one supermarket, a Winn Dixie, Lindo says.

Since most of the city's residents work in the agricultural industry, a vast number of them work for a few powerful packinghouses. Lindo says while most of these packing houses only offer meager, if any, donations, one of these facilities, Six L's Packing Company, has agreed to match donations of up to $50,000. The catch is that the donations must come from within Immokalee, and not surrounding cities like Fort Myers or Naples.