A new online resource lists social service providers who have the capacity to communicate with Spanish-speaking clients with limited command of English. The “Directory of Bilingual Social Services” for the Eugene-Springfield community is located here on the website of the University of Oregon’s Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS).

The directory is primarily intended for providers—although sections of the directory have been translated to Spanish, the listings themselves have not. By phoning local providers, members of the CSWS Research Interest Group “Becoming Bicultural: Latino Immigrant Mothers Raising American Children” found that currently 123 agencies and organizations have bilingual capacity to communicate with Spanish-speaking clients with social service needs.

“This shows a substantive improvement during the decade,” co-coordinator Marcela Mendoza said. “However, Centro Latino Americano in Eugene is still the only organization with culturally competent, fully bilingual staff. On a different note, all the social service agencies that we called in Springfield are bilingual, but not all the agencies that we called in Eugene have the same capacity.”

This directory is an outcome of a series of three workshops for Latino parents that the research group organized and presented at Springfield High School in February 2009.  At the end of the third workshop, they distributed a list of bilingual social services in our community. The parents in attendance expressed the need to (a) get a more comprehensive listing, and (b) make local service providers aware of the bilingual services that are “out there” to help Spanish-speaking clients with limited command of English.

June 25, 2009—Anthropologist and CSWS researcher Marcela Mendoza has been picked as interim, half-time executive director at the nonprofit agency Centro Latino Americano in Eugene, Oregon.

Marcela Mendoza

Services at Centro Latino Americano include children’s programs, multicultural parenting classes, crisis and referrals, transitional housing, counseling, English as a Second Language classes and a jobs program.

Mendoza recently co-edited the “Directory of Bilingual Social Services” with funding through a mini-grant from SELCO Community Credit Union and CSWS sponsorship. Mendoza is the co-coordinator of the CSWS Research Interest Group “Becoming Bicultural: Latino Immigrant Mothers Raising American Children.”