Norma Aguilar awarded 2020 Presidential Staff Excellence

Norma Aguilar, student affairs academic adviser and coordinator for the Student Ability Success Center at SDSU Imperial Valley, was named the university Presidential Staff Excellence Award winner for Community Service in August.

The Presidential Staff Excellence Awards annually recognize the outstanding contributions and efforts made by San Diego State University staff in support of the university, fellow employees and the community. This year more than 100 staff members were nominated by their colleagues for the award that is given in seven categories.

Aguilar’s award recognizes her work in co-founding the Brown Bag Coalition

Norma Aguilar

(BBC) with Maribel Padilla, a high school classmate, and the volunteer group’s ongoing effort to cook and serve meals to Calexico’s homeless every day.

“I cannot overstate the importance of our staff to the lives of our students,” SDSU President Adela de la Torre said in announcing this year’s

seven Staff Excellence Award winners. “Their steadfast dedication and commitment play a crucial role in the development of our students, and to the advancement of our mission to create a more equitable, compassionate and prosperous world.”

Community service, academic excellence and research are considered the three pillars of education at SDSU Imperial Valley. For Aguilar, taking on a community service project comes as naturally as breathing.

Yet neither Aguilar nor BBC co-founder Padilla could imagine what lay ahead when they scrambled to find temporary shelter for the homeless in Calexico on New Year’s Eve in 2014 as temperatures plummeted.

Aguilar, a Calexico native and former school board member, persuaded the Calexico Unified School District to open the high school gym for the homeless for a week.

What was envisioned to be a project for a few days continued for nearly two months, with moves from the school gym to a church and then to tents the city set up in Rockwood Park.

“It took over my life for those first weeks,” Aguilar said. “I would clock out at work and go straight there and work until late night.”

Even after the tent shelter closed in early 2015, Aguilar and Padilla continued cooking because they realized that providing a hot meal daily made a world of difference for the homeless, a mix of new immigrants from south of the border, field workers and families who had lost their housing and lived in cars or a motel room, and late in the month, for seniors on fixed incomes.

That is when the project evolved into the Brown Bag Coalition, which now organizes groups of volunteers to take turns cooking and serving meals – every night of the year. The work has continued through the pandemic.

Today, on average the Brown Bag Coalition serves about 60 to 70 people a day. Brown Bag Coalition also collects donations of socks, shoes, clothing, jackets, blankets, and beanies to distribute periodically.

From the start, Aguilar recruited SDSU IV students to join the effort, and there are often a handful of students who help cook and serve.

Aguilar became a role model, “not only because of her leadership skills but because of her humanity,” Viviann Ceseña said during a spring interview while she was pursuing her master’s degree in social work. “When you help serve, you get to see the people in the community and interact with them.”

Ceseña said volunteering enabled her to see past the statistics and recognize homeless individuals are real people.

“This allows us to see past preconceived notions and see others empathetically,” she said. “There are many ways one can participate, by cooking, donating, serving. It all counts and it’s all appreciated.”

Both Aguilar and Padilla believe that working with the Brown Bag Coalition extends the education SDSU IV students receive and opens their eyes to a different world that’s right in their neighborhood. Community service helps serve as a reminder of how much it matters to reach out to a person in need.