Photo Credit: La Voz I recently attended the funeral of our Godmother Lala Esquibel. Her passing was more than an interruption of the life our families. The closer you got to her two sons in their moment of sorrow, the more devastating was her departure. They say that funerals are a way of coping for those left behind and this certainly was a great example of that purpose. I lost my mother in 2002 after a relatively long illness. Knowing she would be gone soon, she attended o

MAFO held its annual National Farmworker Conference and Convention this week in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  The MAFO Conference is an opportunity for advocates and service providers for the farmworker community to come together to discuss current issues affecting America’s farmworkers and to share innovative tools and best practices.  The theme of this year’s conference was Building Stronger Rural Communities and ECMHSP’s strong presence made significant contributions in suppor

Dr. David Conde; Photo Credit: La Voz Bilingüe David Conde is not a stranger to immigration, immigrant rights or immigrant needs. In fact, he grew up in a migrant home as part of a family that “traveled the country to put food on people’s tables,” as he tells it. Boards of Directors Professionally, he has both literally and figuratively continued to put food on people’s tables. Conde has spent most of his life fighting to strengthen and uphold immigrant rights. He is the Pr

Speaker Paul Schmitz at the conference. ECMHSP hosted our annual conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, from March 14-16. The conference theme was “Looking Towards the Future: Innovation, Leadership, Success.” Everyone in attendance received a wealth of information, with a particular focus on innovative practices to improve the quality of our program. There were far too many wonderful presentations to share the details of them all with you here. However, we do want to share w

Parents in Indiantown leave their children at the ECMHSP center to learn and play while they work in zucchini fields. On January 20, the Board of Directors of East Coast Migrant Head Start Project had the opportunity to visit children and staff at our wonderful center in Indiantown, Florida. The day began as days begin for many of our children – with a bus ride. And like the preschool children who ride our school buses, the ride to Indiantown was a learning experience for eve

Preschool teacher Kerry Cormier stands with QA Manager Beth Zinkand and CEO Dr. Jose Villa. Last week, East Coast Migrant Head Start Project completed its administrative self-assessment – the final phase of its annual self-assessment. When the Head Start program was created 50 years ago, the early childhood experts who developed the program understood how difficult it would be to provide high-quality early childhood education in impoverished communities.  For that reason, the

Dr. David Conde is the President for North America of the Chamber of the Americas. He currently serves as the President of the ECMHSP Board of Directors and is a contributing writer for La Voz Bilingüe. This is his latest article. For me, my early educational journey was a messy business with many stops and starts as we traveled the migrant and seasonal work route around the country. We could not start the school until well into the academic year and had to leave early to sta

Establishing Head Start services in a local community is one of the most challenging and fascinating journeys we take at ECMHSP.  It involves the coming together of talented and dedicated folks from a wide variety of disciplines, and it involves countless hours of strategizing, planning, and very hard work. Young girl playing and learning in an ECMHSP Head Start classroom in Florida. On February 5, members of our Board of Directors had the opportunity to meet many of these ta

Last week, we sent out a poll to the ECMSHP community to help us choose a name for our ECMHSP Blog. With a majority of votes, we had a clear winner. ECMHSP’s blog will now be called: From Harvest to Head Start. Our new blog name represents the services and support ECMHSP has been providing our farmworker families for more than thirty years: from the fields and orchards where they perform back-breaking work to feed America, to the Head Start centers where we provide their chil