‘No longer invisible’
Nonprofit helps Latino community celebrate its culture and provides lifeline for families during the pandemic
Belinda Hernandez Arriaga moved with her family to Half Moon Bay 17 years ago and saw a need for more community support for the immigrant agricultural and service workers who were among her new neighbors and fellow parishioners. A clinical social worker, she founded the nonprofit Ayudando Latinos A Soñar initially with a focus on cultural arts programs. But it has since grown into much more than that. And with the new challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, ALAS has become a lifeline for local families, providing everything from face masks to food. She sat down with us to talk about her work. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q
Ayudando Latinos A Soñar means “Helping Latinos Dream.” What was the inspiration behind the name?
A
We like to think of it as “Believing in Latinos to Dream.” It just really is: What is our mission? “Alas” means “wings” in Spanish, so our emblem is a heart with wings. It’s giving families wings to fly.
Q
You’re trained in social work and have a doctorate in education. Did you see yourself running a nonprofit?
A
I originally wanted to go into law. When I was studying for the LSAT
(Law School Admission Test), I did work for an outpatient setting for high-risk youth. Ever since I was a kid, my parents always did service work in the community. And as a first-generation college student, I found I could get a master’s in social work and a career that would give me the opportunity to continue serving and giving back.
Q
Tell us more about how your parents inspired you.
A
My dad was a deacon. He always taught me about service. He was an electrician, and he got hired to work in the
Panama Canal Zone. So when I was 2 to 5, I lived in Panama. My parents worked with nuns there in the orphanage, and they needed help from families. We were a foster family, so we’d have children coming in. As a young girl, I remember playing with them, and when they would leave I was crying at this idea that they’d go back there. My father working as a deacon was always teaching me to stand up for justice and always stand up for the poor. We grew up poor ourselves — there was a time when my dad lost his job. My faith has taught me to give back and also my dad’s memory, what he taught me.
QYou mostly grew up in Texas and after earning your master’s in social work at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, you came out to San Jose in 1998 to continue your education and started working for Catholic Charities and then providing mental health services in Santa Clara County’s juvenile hall. What led you to Half Moon Bay?
A
I missed home a lot but also loved California. I felt if I’m going to have my life with my family in California, I want to be by the ocean. My dad was in the Merchant Marines, he was always by the water. I feel my dad is most present by the ocean, and if I’m going to be so far from home, I want to be by the ocean. We never knew about Half Moon Bay. one day we were going down by Highway 92, and we said, “Let’s go see what Half Moon Bay is about.” It was September, with all the Christmas trees and wildflowers and sunflowers and pumpkin patches and we were like, “Oh my gosh, this is so amazing!” So literally that day we decided we were going to move to Half Moon Bay.
Q
What motivated you to start ALAS?
A
I started to learn about the community and through church I’d go to see up close what the community was experiencing and the needs they had. I started to do pro bono mental health work, that’s when I really got to understand the challenges of the community. The Latino community was very hidden — visible in the workspace, but hidden in ways to be celebrated in their identity. It reminded me of things when I was growing up, this invisibility, living in the shadows of being Mexican, being different. What they needed was to celebrate who they were.
Q
What was the most moving encounter you had?
A
In 2011 I had a little girl I saw who was struggling with really bad stomach pains. Nobody could figure out why. Medically, she came out fine. But she was having visible pain. It was when they started having deportation of families. She drew this picture one day, a little baby cat and big-face mama cat with big tears, crying. She crossed out mama cat and put “no papers,” and on baby cat put “papers.” I made the connection that was her way of telling me her fear.
Q
ALAS started with cultural arts programs — mariachi, traditional dance. Did that help?
A
What we saw was a celebration — we saw families being proud of who they are, and we saw this kind of like healing, of the community being able to go back to their roots. I don’t think anything can take the place of people seeing themselves and their children, hearing this applause, seeing all the joys that brings. It reaffirms that you matter and that your culture matters.
Q
ALAS also offers mental health services, help with immigration legal matters, after-school tutoring for English learners, support for asylum-seekers. What are some more recent challenges?
A
In November 2019 we had the largest nursery shutdown — 300 employees lost their jobs. We were like, ”What are we going to do?” We got a grant through the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation to hire someone and work with all the folks who lost their jobs. We were still working with them when all of a sudden COVID-19 hit and it just had a crushing effect on our community. Savings were depleted, people were trying to figure out how to make it. Silicon Valley Community Foundation stepped in to give us some help.
Q
What is ALAS doing to help the community with COVID-19?
A
We started farmworker outreach, made 7,000 face masks for farmworkers. We started Farmworker Fridays where people can sponsor lunch for farmworkers, just to say thank you for what they’re doing. We heard they needed hoodies, it’s really cold over here. We were able to purchase sweatshirts for them with grant. We are having our mental health worker go out with us during the outreach to see what kind of mental health needs they have. We started to deliver these food bags in cooperation with our food bank every Thursday. We were hearing they needed more food, and we’d never done a food pantry before. We talked to city leaders, so we said let’s start a pop-up food pantry at the library.
Q
What’s been the most rewarding thing about your work?
A
To know our community knows we’re there for them. We believe in our community and they believe in us. This work is beyond just us, it’s the whole community coming together. We’re no longer invisible.
To learn more about ALAS go to its website at alashmb.org or call 650-5608947.