HSIAC Projects Santa Ana Community College Gloria Guzman Santa Ana College Co-Director Santa Ana, CA

In 1999 Santa Ana College, one of two colleges in the Rancho Santiago Community College District, received a grant in the first round of HSIAC funding.

Our proposal, the Microenterprise Program for Family Childcare Provider Training, responded to a need identified in our existing COPC grant. Additional childcare was critical in our community. To reach out to the target population, the training needed to be in Spanish.

Our proposal included three objectives. First, we renovated a space at an off campus site that the college was renting from the city of Santa Ana. The classroom included a mock home with kitchen, bath, dining/living area and play yard.

Our second objective, was the family childcare provider training program in Spanish. This was one of the first educational opportunities for Spanish dominant residents in our community. The curriculum included child development, business and health components.

As a third objective, we provided the opportunity for graduates to access a micro-loan up to $5,000 to help start their businesses.

Since the grant ended in 2002 this training program has been fully institutionalized under the Continuing Education Division of the college. In seven years the program has graduated more than 550 students.

In early 2004, we received the bad news that the city of Santa Ana had decided to cancel the $1 a year lease the District had on the building where our program was housed. The land was in the Empowerment Zone and, unfortunately, had more productive uses to meet EZ goals.

To remedy this space problem we wrote and were funded for a second HSIAC grant in Half the funds are to be used to renovate a portable unit as a classroom/Resource Center for Providers and Parents. These funds will also expand the VERY over extended Child Development Center on our Continuing Education campus where the new classroom/ Resource Center will be located.

The second goal of our current project is to replicate our Family Childcare Provider training program for our Vietnamese community. While the training is in English, the materials have been translated into Vietnamese and the teachers are bilingual. This spring we began our first class of 24, and already have a waiting list for the fall class.

Another unexpected outcome of our first project was the formation of a professional association for Spanish- speaking family childcare providers in Orange County. To help them be successful and therefore be an ongoing resource to our graduates, the third goal of our current project is to provide leadership training and support for this group, the Asociacion Latina para el Cuidado Infantil (ALCI). ALCI was incorporated and received its 501(c)(3) status during our first grant.

We are also working with a second community group, Reading Corners. This is a grass roots literacy effort run by parents in several apartment complexes in the community. Our project goal is to help them to incorporate and receive their 501(c)(3) status. They would then be eligible for grant funds to expand their work into other areas of Santa Ana.