Focus Points Family Resource Center: Where Family Always is the Focus
Irene Mejia explains her happiness at being indoors attending a nutrition class on a beautiful summer afternoon by simply saying, “Now is my time.”
A wife and busy mother of a teenage daughter, Irene also is the caregiver for elderly parents and in-laws. That demanding caretaking role is further complicated by the fact that her mother has muscular dystrophy and her father has had a stroke. Neither her parents nor her in-laws speak much English.
But Irene’s English is good since she took the English as a Second Language (ESL) class at Focus Points Family Resource Center three years ago. Since then, she has enrolled in Focus Points’ Adult Basic Education class and now is studying there to get her GED.
Irene is representative of the primarily Spanish-speaking immigrant families in northeast and north central Denver that Focus Points serves. About 1,700 of them last year. Focus Points offers its programs in locations throughout the metro area as well as at their new facility in Denver’s Globeville neighborhood.
In addition to adult education classes, the agency offers parenting workshops and early childhood education. True to its mission to strengthen the entire family, while adults participate in their classes, their children are being engaged, with the goal of increasing their basic literacy and readiness for school.
Focus Points also offers in-home early childhood education to some 200 children each year through the Parents as Teachers and Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) programs.
But now the agency is looking to start even earlier to ensure children are successful. As a major partner in the new Babies 2 College effort, Focus Points is one of several early childhood providers working to create a common vision for parents to understand how to get children into quality early childhood programs with the ultimate goal of the children going on to college.
Cooking Matters
While Irene’s daughter is not young, the 17-year old Jessica is benefitting from Focus Points’ programs as well. She’s attending the nutrition/cooking class along with her mother. A junior in high school, Jessica wants to go to culinary school and someday open her own restaurant.
Together, the mother and daughter have learned how to choose and prepare healthy foods. One week, they were taught how to save money by cutting up a whole chicken instead of buying the prepackaged breasts and thighs. Another week, the lesson was about the health benefits of choosing whole grains instead of refined grains. And always, portion size is a big emphasis.
Irene says her husband likes the idea of saving money by cutting up a whole chicken, but he’s not too crazy about the smaller portion sizes that she’s serving up. “He says ‘this is too small,’” laughs Irene. “I keep telling him he needs to eat less and he says he’ll try.”
Jessica, who admits to liking Big Macs and fries, learned just how much saturated fat is in that meal when the nutritionist from Cooking Matters had her spoon out 13 tablespoons of shortening onto a plate to demonstrate how much unhealthy fat she was getting with her burger and fries. Cooking Matters, a program that gives participants the skills, knowledge and confidence to prepare healthy and affordable meals, is one of many agencies that Focus Points partners with to deliver services to their families.
“It changed my mind about what I eat,” said Jessica who now thinks twice about the fast food meals she used to eat frequently.
As for Irene, who moved to Colorado 18 years ago, she can’t seem to learn enough. “I want to know lots of stuff,” she says. “I want to be able to communicate with people.”
And someday, when she has more freedom, she would like work as a bookkeeper.
And while Irene insists that all this learning is for her, it is clear that her extended family is benefitting. With her grasp of the English language, she is the one who translates for her and her husband’s parents when they are dealing with their doctors or when their health problems land them in the hospital. With the healthy eating information she’s learned, the whole family is eating healthier. And by furthering her education, Irene may someday even be a second wage-earner in her family.
For Irene, just like Focus Points, it truly is all about family.
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For more information on Focus Points Family Resource Center, go to www.focuspoints.org
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