Silicon Valley One - Summer 2008 - (Page 11) “Immigrants are a huge asset. They bring knowledge, information and international connections.” communities in San Francisco, Alameda and San Mateo counties. “The next generation will likely enjoy even greater prosperity than their parents.” Muñoz-Bergman points out that most immigrants aren’t here looking for a handout. “Immigrants bring with them a drive to work hard and succeed—that’s how they got here to begin with. Immigrant workers also make significant contributions to our economy, in every field.” What makes local philanthropy special is that its enormous diversity of culture and ethnicity is mirrored by a diversity of giving. “My big thrill is having donors find their own giving passion, and all I do is put things in process,” says Donna Pray, executive director of Gilroy Foundation, a city affiliate of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The region’s base of philanthropic support can be as specific as endowing in perpetuity a third-grade music teacher and as broad as dealing with hunger or homelessness throughout Silicon Valley. These new immigrants constitute as diverse and socioeconomically enabling a group as the region’s upscale technology icons. Immigrants on both ends of the economic scale are important parts of a mechanism responsible for one of the world’s great economic miracles: the region’s transformation from the agriculturally focused Valley of the Heart’s Delight into the tech-driven Silicon Valley. “Immigrants are a huge asset,” says Teresa Castellanos, Santa Clara County program manager for immigrant relations and integrated services. “They bring knowledge, information and international connections that give us one of the world’s most important and resilient economic engines.” Regional philanthropies’ widespread recognition of the potential value of immigration has led to outreach services in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties that run counter to the current national anti-immigrant tide. By focusing on the globe-girdling diversity of immigrants, strategies and programs—of which the following portraits are but a sampling—have been put in place that are as socially innovative as Silicon Valley’s output is technologically advanced. Day Worker Center of Mountain View. Marroquin is showing off the center’s hiring facility in a hall of Trinity United Methodist Church and thinking back more than a decade to a time when cities like Mountain View and Los Altos passed ordinances banning socalled “journaleros” from congregating on city streets waiting for work. The ordinances were challenged, and the cities backed down. Despite the day workers’ victory, it was still widely recognized that permitting scores of men and women to congregate outside local Orchard Supply Hardware and Home Depot stores was neither good for workers nor for potential employers. They needed an alternative. The result was the 1996 founding of the Los Altos Day Worker Center that later moved to Trinity Church in nearby Mountain View. The facility was established along the lines of a similar facility that Josefina, a former client at Day Worker Center of Mountain View, now has seven steady cleaning jobs. Safe, orderly, dignified “Today, we are very fortunate, but it was not always so,” says Maria Marroquin, executive director of the www.siliconvalleycf.org http://www.siliconvalleycf.org
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