Casa de Maryland Inc.
Gustavo A. Torres, Executive Director
Mary Wendeln, C.PP.S.
310 Tulip Ave.
Takoma Park, Md. 20912
(301) 270-0442
(301) 270-8659 fax

Organized about 11 years ago by a group of Salvadoran immigrants and Anglo church people (including Catholic and Quaker groups among others), CASA -- originally "Central American Solidarity and Assistance," an acronym chosen because it's also Spanish for "house" -- was formed originally to provide emergency services -- primarily food -- to the growing community of Salvadoran refugees.

With the arrival of the 1986 Immigration Act and amnesty issues, it didn't take long for CASA's mission to grow into advocacy, providing both information and assistance to immigrants who would otherwise have faced both cultural and language barriers keeping them from getting access to the system. A decade later, CASA continues those efforts and has matured into a multiple-purpose organization with many outstanding model projects.

A major project, a day-labor center, emerged in the early '90s when an informal hiring center in the neighborhood at the corner of Piney Branch and University (known throughout the Americas as "Silver Spring," a place where refugees could go and find work) ran into difficulties including complaints by local businesses and raids by the INS. CASA organized meetings among participants, neighbors and law enforcement, and eventually took on the hiring center as a program, now moved into a renovated house a few blocks south of the old hiring site.

While at first glance it appears to be a replica of the Southern California day-labor sites, where immigrants gather early every day to await prospective employers for casual manual labor, it's actually much more organized, with a number of innovative elements invented by Carlos Gutirrez, the program director, a one-time labor organizer in Guatemala who later became a refugee and sought U.S. asylum when his organizing efforts drew the unfavorable attention of his country's government. Under the CASA system, would-be workers register, filling out a form outlining their skills, language capabilities, address and phone number; they are then issued a CASA photo ID. Employers, likewise, must register with CASA before hiring its workers, providing their name, address, phone, the type of work they want done and how much they're willing to pay. Each day, workers sign in for work listing their skills and receiving a random "lottery" number; work is distributed by the numbers, eliminating the boisterously competitive pushing that's been a problem for some of the West Coast sites.

Among CASA's many other activities, several stand out: The AIDS/HIV Education Program, run by Modesto Ulerio, mobilizes residents -- many of them senior citizens -- who receive a $40 monthly stipend and a food basket in exchange for receiving training and then communicating awareness to their neighbors, in a neighbor-to-neighbor fashion reminiscent of "barefoot practitioners." Employment and Training programs (Melissa White, coordinator) offer job-oriented training, primarily for women, in computer skills, food handling and sewing, with interested women participating in a supportive, self-help organization called Mujeres de Hoy ("Women of Today").

CASA also offers literacy education, information and referral, and immigration assistance for simple matters that don't require a lawyer; its legal services department provides help with labor and workplace problems and more complex immigration issues. It's a tremendous amount of work to be done by a grassroots group with a staff of 11 and an annual budget of $330,000, but CASA has been making things happen for more than a decade now.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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