History
In the late 1990s, the San Francisco Bay Area
was in the midst of the dot-com boom. As many white, affluent and young people made millions,
nearly over night, many working poor Latino immigrants were left
behind to deal with the ramifications of gentrification. Many
Latino immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and South America
who called the Mission their home soon found themselves pushed
out of San Francisco's Mission District.
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| Sister
Petra Chavez, Founder, and CAMINOS student |
While San Francisco was experiencing this change,
Sister Petra Chavez of the Catholic order Sisters of Mercy decided
to do something about the growing economic and social gap created
by the dot-come phenomenon.
Her vision was to primarily create programming
that would enable Latina women to transition from backbreaking
and underpaid jobs such as nannies, housecleaners, and restaurant
service workers to living wage jobs. Latina women were unable
to take advantage of the technological boom happening in the Bay
Area.
CAMINOS works to overcome the cyclical nature
of poverty caused by lack of information and access to resources.
CAMINOS was founded in 1999 by Sister Petra
Chavez to provide access to wide-ranging computer skills training
for low-income Latina immigrant women. CAMINOS had four major
goals to overcome the cyclical nature of poverty caused by lack
of information and access to resources:
- to teach skills that are in demand by employers and that would
draw ample wages for self-sufficiency;
- to offer an alternative to the CALWORKS training program which
many monolingual and limited English language speakers are unable
to access.
- to work to overcome the cyclical nature of poverty caused
by lack of information and access to resources;
- to provide classes in Spanish to enable monolingual Spanish
speakers and those with limited English language proficiency
to be part of a local educational technology training program
Today Caminos occupies three buildings on Valencia
Street (between 25th and 26th Streets) which houses three classrooms,
a computer repair shop and administrative offices. CAMINOS - Pathways
Learning Center now trains over 200 women per year in courses
ranging from Computer Essentials, Microsoft Office, Photoshop,
HTML and graphic and webdesign; and computer repair, upgrading
and networking. Nearly 2,000 working poor Latina immigrant women
have found opportunities for self and economic improvement using
information technology.
At the heart of CAMINOS is a commitment to the
development of women and the elimination of poverty.
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