Local tutors among host of volunteers at day worker center

By Elizabeth Ridgeway, Special to the Town Crier

Sue Sullivan, pictured upper left, leads an English class at the Mountain View Worker Center at Calvary Church.

“Employers, please come inside,” reads a large sign at the entrance to the Mountain View Worker Center at Calvary Church.

Inside the center, men and women, paper and pencil in hand, fill rows of folding chairs. A volunteer English tutor scribbles on the whiteboard, drilling grammar, vocabulary and useful phrases. Attention wavers from the lesson when a potential employer enters the room, as many of these workers will be lucky to get work for more than one or two days in a given week.

When they aren’t on a job, workers study and volunteer at the center, among other things running a daily car wash. Opened in 1996, the non-profit provides a safe environment where day workers and employers can connect at the church, 1880 California Ave.

On a budget of $5,000 a month, the center hosts language education, job skills training, translation services and a weekly mobile medical clinic. Most important, it provides workers an alternative to waiting on street corners and advocates for fair pay and safe working conditions.

At the center, most workers are from foreign countries and do not speak English fluently. On this Thursday morning, the classroom overflowed with students. Tutors Rich Strock and Sue Sullivan taught their students in a spanglish that combined grammar and culture for tutors, too.

“I’ve learned more Spanish at the center than in any class I’ve ever taken,” said Strock, a Los Altos resident and five-year volunteer at the center. He first visited as a potential employer and after meeting the director and seeing the program, returned to volunteer.

“The center is a dignified place. It gives workers a work address and phone number and a structure for setting up future employment dates,” Strock said.

Sullivan, a Los Altos Hills resident, added, “It sends them out in really good shape to do a full day’s work, especially thanks to the food Safeway donates.”

The range of language skills and the shifts in attendance, depending on who finds work, make developing a curriculum challenging for volunteers. Strock estimated that the typical worker at the center has at best five to eight years of limited education. Day workers from impoverished rural backgrounds lack the learning skills and materials that help a language student succeed.

“I asked how many people in the room had ever owned a dictionary and there were only two out of 15,” Strock said.

Despite the challenges, Strock and Sullivan described the fun of adult education. During her Thursday class, Sullivan played a traditional Ecuadorian folk song that students translated, debating the appropriate English words.

“I get single women to list the qualities they look for in a man,” Strock said. “That helps develop vocabulary and measurement systems like feet, inches and pounds. I’ve made some terrible mistakes. They pull me aside afterwards and tell me what slang word I’ve accidentally said.”

Director Maria Marroquin oversees the center’s programs.

“We are a close community who know each other, with an orderly list to assign jobs,” she said. “There is a policy of no drugs or alcohol, we can reserve for jobs in advance, and we help with translation.”

In Marroquin’s office, the phone rings nonstop. One employer called, concerned that the worker doing housekeeping for her needed supplies. Marroquin spoke to the employer in English, to the housekeeper in Spanish, and then responded to the employer: “No, she doesn’t have any questions. Everything is going fine.”

The English lessons at the center focus on job-specific goals that can help in such situations.

“We do mock interviews and basic skills like filling out applications in English,” Strock said. “I make a list on the board: What is your work strategy? Coming to the center is a first step.”

Volunteers are needed to write grants and organize fund raising, match workers with classified ads, do bookkeeping and tutor in English. The current facility at Calvary Church is only available from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., and is overcrowded. Marroquin hopes to find a larger facility with longer hours, where afternoons might be devoted to English lessons.

Strock described how meaningful it has been to serve members of his community through the center. “Of all the things I do in a week, spending time there has the biggest payback for me,” he said.

The self-governed center has found ways to give back to the community that supports it. Just as Sullivan’s English lesson was wrapping up, Ismael Lopez arrived in his pickup with donations from Safeway. Once a day worker himself, he now volunteers his free time and hires day workers to help with landscaping jobs.

When the bread arrived, workers from the center carried much of it in one door and out the other: In the front yard, local seniors and low-income neighbors lined up to receive the extra food. The workers donate all the food they don’t keep for themselves and their families.

Workers hold a by-donation car wash in the parking lot 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Mondays through Saturdays. In addition, donations are needed for a garage sale to benefit the center scheduled Sept. 24. The public is invited to attend.

The center is open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., Mondays through Saturdays. Prospective employers can call ahead or drop by the center and describe the job and number

of workers needed. They register their contact information with the center, negotiate an hourly wage (usually $10-15) and leave with a worker, also registered with the center.

For more information, visit www.dayworkercenter.org or call 903-4102.