Silicon Valley One - Summer 2008 - (Page 13) along to the next generation; two of her daughters attend college. Very soon, the Day Worker Center will be moving from Trinity Church; the organization is in the process of buying a Mountain View building, and its governing workers committee is contemplating opening an on-site car wash where workers can find employment when things get slow. Somali San José The office of Somali Community Services is a barely furnished suite on a parking lot at the back of an office/condo complex in San José’s downscale Edenvale neighborhood. Its location and feel are an accurate mirror of the status of an immigrant group just beginning to climb the American economic mountain. Twice a week, the office serves as an afterschool homework program for 45 sons and daughters of Somali immigrants. The rest of the time, the space is the office of Ahmed Heban, the program’s 30-yearold director. Furniture may be sparse in the office, but Heban’s mind is overflowing with programs he wants to implement to help the 6,000 Somali immigrants who have moved to San José in the past decade. Top of mind is the kind of literacy program and language studies that Heban hopes will help more Somali students pass California’s high school proficiency test, as well as history and citizenship studies. The program is also working to create a media center, which will allow community members to listen to news from home on Voice of America and BBC Somali-language broadcasts. A critical problem facing San José’s Somalis is a need for translators proficient enough to deal with landlord/ tenant disputes, medical emergencies and interactions with the police. “It’s a question of legal rights,” Heban notes from behind a desk littered with court documents. “When law enforcement goes to Somali households, people don’t know what they can and can’t say and do.” Heban sees the situation of Somalis as similar to that of the Vietnamese when they came to San José in the 1970s and began organizing themselves politically. He questions, as the newly arrived Vietnamese once did, why county services are not always available in his native language. “We’re still in the process of settling in,” Heban says, adding that the Somali immigrant community “needs to learn a lot about American culture.” Still, Heban sees hope in the fact that “the Vietnamese in San José [started] on the same rough footing as we are now, and today they are well-established.” Chinese seniors find food and fellowship in San Bruno. Maria Marroquin, right, works the phones at Day Worker Center, where she serves as executive director. A (Mexican) American success story A combination of frugality and business sense enabled the Mata family of Gilroy to build a quiet fortune in commerce and real estate in a city known as the Garlic Capital of the World. Family patriarch Julio Mata arrived from Mexico more than 60 years ago with his brother and sister, worked hard as a field hand, saved, and opened a downtown grocery with his siblings. Over the years, they invested in real estate, remained modest about their success, and died as wealthy and respected town elders. When Julio’s son, Jose Mata, inherited the estate, he decided to return the favor by investing it in the future of Gilroy’s Hispanic students. Now in his 80s, Mata initially gave cash, then real estate to the Gilroy Foundation. Being the kind of philanthropist who is not satisfied with once-removed giving, Mata will still occasionally slip a $25,000-plus check under the door at the Gilroy Foundation. His instruction for Pray, the foundation’s director, is simply to “put it in my fund.” The Julio Mata Family Scholarship Fund is based on the recognition, passed on from father to son, that a college education was the key to success in America. The Mata Family Scholarship Fund gives four $40,000 scholarships a year to children of Mexican heritage. Journeys with friends “This program is open to everyone … as long as they can speak Chinese,” laughs Leonard Lee, director of the San Bruno Chinese Church’s Senior Center. To be www.siliconvalleycf.org innovation through philanthropy o n e 13 http://www.siliconvalleycf.org
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