Winter Yard Work, a few simple ideas!

Yard-work training at Casa Latina

As the wet (and snowy!) Seattle winter begins melting into spring, it brings yard-care jobs and education to Casa Latina’s Worker Center. Now is the ideal time to renovate your yard in order to eliminate those unsightly brown spots left over from the previous summer and to make way for the new growth of spring.

Workers at Casa Latina recently enjoyed participating in a pruning training session with Plant Amnesty, an organization whose mission includes providing yard-workers with tips and information about pruning and landscape maintenance.

We’d like to share a few TIPS with you here to help you prepare your yard for the onset of spring:

1. Lawn Renovation
Lawn renovation should begin with a detailed scraping. This opens the ground and exposes the soil, allowing new seeds to germinate. Next, level the lawn by covering the lowest areas with new soil, then reseed the entire lawn if necessary, or simply patch certain areas as required. If you do this in the winter, nature should provide enough water to germinate the seeds.

Oscar leveling the ground

2. Pruning
This is the perfect time to begin pruning your trees and flowers. In order to improve the production of fruit trees and bushes, you’ll need to prune them before they start to bud. You should also cut back overgrown bushes and trim non-fruit trees before they start to grow again in the spring.

The art of pruning

A few additional pruning tips:
— Spray your fruit trees with dormant oil three times during the winter season.

— Clean bushes and trees from the inside out, removing dead or broken branches.

— Thin your fruit tree branches so they won’t become too heavy when fruit starts to grow.

3. Planting
It’s best to plant bare-root trees and flowers before spring arrives. This is the best time of year to get great prices on new trees and bushes for your newly landscaped yard or garden.

If this list of pointers and ideas inspires you to tackle the renovation of your own yard or garden and you’d like some expert help, please give our Worker’s Center a call at 206.956.0779.

There are lots of hard workers at Casa Latina who are eager to help you prepare your yard for the coming Seattle spring!

Caring Across Generations: “We Need Each Other!”

On Saturday, February 11th, more than two hundred care-givers, care recipients, families, and community members met in Seattle for a town-hall-style meeting to discuss the care crisis in America. The meeting’s primary aim was to address the lack of affordable quality care options for older Americans and people with disabilities, as well as care-givers’ struggle to receive training, support, and respect.

More than 200 people gathered for CARE!

The Seattle event marked the local launch of a national grassroots campaign called Caring Across Generations that aims to transform America’s long-term care industry. Similar events will be taking place in at least 14 other U.S. cities over the next 12 months. The campaign, made up of more than 70 organizations nationally, works to protect what we have—Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security—while creating what we need: two million new care jobs, training and protection for workers, new paths to citizenship for immigrant workers, and measures to make care more affordable for struggling families.

Kassandra (in the middle) sharing with her Casa Latina friends

As one of 23 local organizations endorsing the campaign, Casa Latina had nearly 30 people in attendance at the Seattle meeting. Those at the event learned more about Caring Across Generations while listening to personal testimonies that inspired us to offer our support. Kassandra Gonzalez, a domestic worker and Casa Latina volunteer was one of those who shared their stories. Kassandra feels she’s discriminated against since those doing domestic work are excluded from labor protections, they don’t have access to health care, and are often working without basic legal workers’ rights. “It will be a dream come true to have rights like every other worker in the country,” said Kassandra.

Jodeen Olguín-Tayler from The National Domestic Workers Alliance stated it clearly: “The truth is we need each other! This is a crisis that effects all of us—one that everyone in our society needs to work on together to find a solution.”

As the country’s “age wave” begins this year—with Americans reaching age 65 at the rate of one every eight seconds—the transformation of the long-term care industry is more urgent than ever. In Seattle, nearly 3,800 individuals currently receive home care support through the Department of Social and Health Services. With more than 10% of Seattle’s population now 65 or older, and with over 12% of Seattleites now between ages 55 and 65, those needing home care will only be increasing in the coming years.

The first step toward addressing this crisis locally is to pass a Seattle City Council resolution in support of the values of the Caring Across Generations campaign. By doing so, Seattle would become the first city in the nation to pass legislation around this issue. We encourage you, our friends and neighbors, to join Casa Latina in offering support to the campaign. We care and we know that you care too! ¡Sí Se Puede!

Maricela and Emily are Caring Across generations together

Come celebrate Valentine’s Day with Casa Latina and share the love!

Flora Gaytan from Oaxaca, Mex

This week we’d like to share Flora Gaytán’s story: A single mother from Mexico who’s been living in Seattle for two-and-a-half years, Flora earns a living cleaning homes in the Seattle area. When she first came to the USA from her native city of Oaxaca, she found a job working in a hotel. Unfortunately, due to the poor economy she lost her job. It was then that she found Casa Latina and started going to the Workers’ Center for training and to learn how she could contribute to her community.

Now certified in Green Cleaning, Flora has a number of employers who regularly hire her through Casa Latina. Through the leadership program, Flora has also been growing as a leader in her community; she’s found her voice and now uses it to call for fair treatment of all domestic workers.

Last year Flora attended the Domestic Workers Alliance meeting in San Francisco and, in her own words, the experience helped her realize how important it is to be informed about the issues and to work with community organizations that are fighting for the rights of thousands of domestic workers like herself. The National Conference for Domestic Workers will be held in Washington, DC this May, and Flora and 14 of her friends and colleagues from the Workers’ Center hope to be able to attend.

In order to help raise funds for their trip, Flora and her colleagues are planning a delicious Mexican Valentine’s Day dinner at Casa Latina on the evening of Tuesday, February 14th. We’d like to invite all our neighbors in the Seattle community to join us to celebrate this day of love! Grab your friends and loved ones or even come by yourself to enjoy a home-cooked Valentine’s meal, while lending your support to the women at Casa Latina’s Workers’ Center at the same time!

Here are details for the dinner:
Menu
Salad: Jicama Salad
Entreé: Stuffed Chicken Breast or Cheese Chile Relleno
(both served with Mexican rice)
Dessert: Flan Napolitano
*Dinner includes one beer per person.

Minimun donation suggested is $15.00 per person, or more if you can!

Time:
Tuesday, February 14th at either 6:00pm or 7:30pm

Location:
Casa Latina
317 17th Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98144
(at 17th & South Jackson Street)

Make your reservation with Maria Reyna by calling (206) 956-0779, extension 103.
¡Gracias y Felíz Día del Amor y la Amistad!

For more information about the Domestic Workers Alliance, please visit:
http://youtu.be/EInOUjlCdIQ?hd=1

“When our language difference becomes something that we share, not something that divides us” — by Barbara Peterson

Need help?  Call my neighbors!

I am new to Seattle, but I can personally recommend Casa Latina workers:  We are neighbors (Somos vecinos), even though we live in different parts of town.  Let me explain.

Barbara in class last Monday evening

When my husband died, I retired from education, left my hometown of Houston and headed for the Pacific Northwest to be with my son and his wife, a Seattle native.  My local church became partners with Casa Latina in March of 2011, and by summer I was riding the bus out to South Jackson Street several days each week to volunteer in the development office.  Studying the Casa Latina website, my attention was caught by “Somos Vecinos,” the unique language-learning program offered on Monday evenings.  I was already working hard to regain my rusted-out undergraduate Spanish, and this program sounded like the missing piece of my puzzle.

On the first Monday it became clear that I was being challenged to work hard on my Spanish with a highly-qualified native teacher, and that I had joined more than just a language class.  Four groups—two levels of Spanish and two levels of English—met together in class for an hour and a half, and then the real connecting began.  After a brief snack, we 60 students spent 45 minutes being “vecinos” (neighbors).  We were led by the staff through a series of games and activities that put us face to face in small groups, speaking both languages alternately.  We shared names and stories, we provided each other with missing words and got to know one another by helping each other.  Slowly it became obvious that here our language differences would be something that we could share, not something that would divide us.

At “Somos Vecinos” I have a chance to get to know the workers from Casa Latina’s workers’ center, and they have a chance to become acquainted with people from the community who value Casa Latina and Hispanic language and culture.  Now that I’ve entered my second semester of classes, I know that these are the people with whom I will be singing and partying at events later in the year.  Even when I feel tired and Monday night is feeling late, it is always worth the effort to stay for the intercambio, an opportunity not available anywhere else.

Glendi is teaching her native language: Spanish

Now I know:  If you need help, you can call my neighbors.  They know about helping.

Bill hired Ramon to work for his company; now they're learning each others' languages at Somos Vecinos