Madre and Padre’s Little Helper

As a child visiting relatives in Jalisco, Mexico, Jesus Jimenez remembers coming down with a severe stomachache. To treat the pain, his grandmother cut an orange in half, let it dry in the sun, then told him to suck on the shriveled pulp.

The home remedy didn’t work. But that’s not the only reason the episode still leaves a bad taste in Jimenez’s mouth 18 years later. “The whole issue of grandma’s remedies versus doctor’s remedies is still relevant in the Latino community,” he says. “And it’s one we need to address.”

Trouble is, there has not been an adequate forum to do so. So Jimenez helped invent one, marshaling the efforts of volunteers and staff with the Latino Children’s Fund to launch Latino Parenting, a slick bilingual quarterly magazine aimed at Hispanic parents that debuted in July.

“The theme is trying to make life better for children in our community,” says Jimenez, executive director of the Latino Children’s Fund, a nonprofit advocacy and education organization based in Los Angeles. “No one addresses the needs of Hispanics or Latinos in a parenting way. No one hands you a manual and says, ‘This is what parenting is all about. These are the trials and tribulations that you’ll be facing.’

“The goal was to give Latino parents parenting skills. We know that a lot of Latinos are disadvantaged. We’re hoping that [the magazine] will lessen our social and economic gaps by building better children.”

The first issue, underwritten largely by Kaiser Permanente and edited by David Avila, a staff writer with the San Bernardino Sun and a member of the fund’s executive board, cost $75,000 to produce. It contained 11 articles on such topics as single parenting, latchkey children, getting the most out of public school, and childhood obesity, and also included recipes and a calendar of family events.

The articles were a mix of original work and stories culled from other sources, which created a problem. One story originally ran in another journal two years ago, and none of the figures was updated--a procedural error that slipped through the cracks, the editors say.

The magazine’s offerings, divided into five themed sections (Education, Parenting, Family, Health and Career), were among those considered most important by 10,000 parents surveyed before the magazine’s launch. That survey also convinced the fund, which has traditionally printed much of its material in English only, that the magazine had to be bilingual to reach its target audience.

“Half read and write Spanish, half read and write English,” says Managing Editor Josephine Sanchez. “If you do it in English, you isolate one half. If you do it in Spanish, you isolate the other.”

The fund has distributed 75,000 free copies through social service agencies, health clinics, Catholic churches and home delivery in heavily Latino communities such as Huntington Park, Pico Rivera and Bell Gardens. Issues can also be purchased at selected Barnes & Noble and B. Dalton bookstores for $3.95.

There are ambitious plans to circulate the full-color, 68-page magazine statewide within a year, concentrating distribution in areas such as the San Joaquin Valley, which has a large population of low-income Latino families.

“One of the things we’re doing now is going to doctors and finding out what issues we should address,” Sanchez says. “As the publication evolves, we will be hitting more cutting-edge issues.”

Jimenez, on loan to the fund from Fiesta Publications, a respected publisher of bilingual arts and entertainment journals, says meeting that goal will likely double the magazine’s operating expenses. But, he cautioned, it’s important the group avoid the temptation to sacrifice quality for quantity. Many Latino publications are “done low-end and cheap,” he says. “There’s nothing out there to take pride in. This is a start.”

For more information or to obtain a copy of the magazine, call (213) 265-1500.