Growing from the roots up

Through the UC Irvine Community Outreach Center in a room in the back

of Harbor Christian Fellowship, director Victor Becerra said he hopes to

establish relationships with those living and working on Costa Mesa’s

Westside to better the community. If the model succeeds, it may be able

to work wonders elsewhere.

On Tuesday, City Editor James Meier sat down with Becerra at the new

outreach center to discuss hopes for the future.

Q: How did you become involved with the community outreach center?

A: Both my wife and I were at Arizona State University for the past 6

1/2 years, and in 2000 my wife came out to give a talk at UCI. One thing

led to another, and they had a series on ongoing conversations and asked

her if she was interested in moving. She said, “Well, let’s see what you

put together,” so they began to recruit her.

In recruiting her, to make the offer beneficial to both of us as a

family, they also talked to me separately and asked me what my interests

were. So it’s for professional development purposes that we came to UCI.

And in looking at possibilities and meeting with folks from the student

affairs side of UCI, I was informed by Dr. Juan Lara, who’s an assistant

vice chancellor there, about the work that professor Kris Day was doing

in Costa Mesa. He informed me that she was in the process of applying for

a grant from HUD -- the office for community partnerships -- to secure

funding to create this community outreach center.

So one thing led to another, and they ended up making my wife an offer

and making me an offer to be the director of this program. We found out

in October that the grant professor Day had submitted the previous spring

had indeed gotten funded.

Q: What would have happened had the grant not been received?

A: We would have continued to look for sources to support the project.

We did have some support already from the university from Vice Chancellor

Manuel Gomez’s office. And via Dr. Lara’s office, they had given us some

operating funds to allow us to begin to do some work administratively. So

we had some infrastructure. And that at least allowed me to come in, have

an office on campus and to begin to do my work as director -- cultivate

relationships here in the community.

Folks began to think about the structure of the project, began to

think about who I might want to sit on our advisory committee, so the

university’s commitment to this project via the chancellor, Vice

Chancellor Gomez and others in the higher administration at UCI never

wavered. They bought the idea, they liked the idea, and they committed to

the idea. So that helped professor Day and I proceed forward with our

work.

Q: What do you hope the center will accomplish in the short run?

A: Our primary effort at this point and throughout our tenure will be

always building relationships, bringing people together in different

sectors in this community, working with them to identify issues, to

prioritize those issues and then to put together a team of people of

which we would be one player, but not the only player or even the primary

player. And look at ways of improving a situation or a program.

But the primary focus is on building relationships and coming up with

ideas to address any concerns.

Q: What are some of the current projects or programs?

A: Our primary focus at the moment is on educational issues. In terms

of actual programmatic area, we helped sponsor the Latino Youth

Conference, and it was held this year for the first time at UCI. That was

a cooperative venture between our office, as well as the UCI volunteers

center, the center for educational partnerships, the office of financial

aid and the learning academic resource center.

So five offices contributed in one way or another to UCI for the

conference and then worked in partnership with community-based

organizations here like Save Our Youth, Girls Inc. and the Shalimar

Center. And there was a planning committee established that started

meeting in December and met every Monday up until the day of the

conference to put it together.

Our job, as a center, was coordination, predominantly organization. We

took the minutes at the meetings. We made sure that people who made

commitments to get things done did and put together calendars and

schedules. We sort of made sure the event, from an organizational point

of view, ran smoothly. We wanted to make sure the kids got the maximum

utility from the opportunity. So that was one event that we worked on.

There is, through a HUD grant that we got, a couple of research

projects that are going on at the moment. One of them is being headed by

professor John Dombrink out of the School of Criminology, Law and

Society, which is a department within social ecology. That study is

looking at the attitude and experiences of Latinos toward the legal

system and law enforcement.

That’s an ongoing research study that we anticipate being completed by

the end of the year. What we expect in the case of any of our research

projects is that they will provide information that will allow us to work

again with our community partners to see how that information can result

in some tangible outcomes. And those outcomes can be represented in a

variety of forms.

For example, they can help agencies working with a predominantly

Spanish-speaking community to look at optional models that are being used

elsewhere to improve what they’re doing, to expand what they’re doing, to

secure more resources to reach more people. But that’s very important to

us that the research that is done on the university’s end is always going

to lead to something concrete, something that can be used by folks for

doing day-to-day work in this community.

Q: And what does the center hope to accomplish in the long run?

A: What we want to do is build partnerships with folks who are

interested in one way, shape or form in improving the quality of life on

the Westside of Costa Mesa because we feel by doing that the entire city

of Costa Mesa will benefit from that.

As I said, our primary focus at least for the immediate future will

continue to be in the area of education because we feel that’s the

foundation. We have to invest in kids, in our students, in our future,

and the best way that we can do that, since the university is in the

business of education, it makes sense for us to start there.

As we achieve the kinds of successes we anticipate achieving in that

area and other issues emerge, we will begin tackling other issues where

we determine we have the expertise in terms of the university and it

makes sense for us to move in that area.

Q: Has there ever been some sort of time limit placed on this project?

A: No. I can tell you this is not going to be a project that is gone

in five years. It’s a long-term project because meaningful community

development and community change requires a long-term investment. Having

done this kind of work before and participated in activities that have

been community development-oriented short-term, you set up a lot of

expectations and then come up with a lot disappointment. It’s a no-win

situation for the community you want to help and the university.

And this is a great community. A lot of things you see going on here,

like demographic change and those kinds of things, are mirrors of what’s

going on in other communities in Orange County and throughout Southern

California, so if we can come here and achieve success and provide a

model for other communities to learn from, that is very much a goal of

ours -- to have this be a program that people can point to and learn

from.

Q: In a sense, it seems this is just a small starting point for what

could help spread throughout the region.

A: Precisely. We are moving very deliberately. We very much believe in

a process of community development that is bottom up. That is, defined in

every way possible by the folks who work here, who live here and who are

going to be here long after we’ve come and gone.

And that bottom-up process takes time because people work 8 a.m. to 5

p.m. and part of it is people from different sectors of the community

also learning to work together, establishing trust and confidence in one

another, finding common ground. Then once that common ground is found,

things actually move pretty quickly. But the process of getting to that

point is what is time consuming. But it’s an investment that is

critically important and that will yield returns that will be very

beneficial to not only the folks who participate in that, but to the

larger community that they’re interested in serving as well.

Q: What are some of the ways you hope to raise funding?

A: We will obviously be doing grant-writing and looking for funds from

foundations that have an interest in the kind of work that we do, as well

as asking some private parties who we’ve been put in contact with who

have expressed an interest in some of proposed projects for the future.

For example, a couple of projects that we anticipate starting this

summer will be SAT preparation workshops, as well as a parent institute,

which will help parents to build their capacities and learn about how to

negotiate local education systems.

And that’s especially important for a sector of the Spanish-speaking

community on this side of town. A lot of them are as interested as the

next person in their children’s education, but since they’re coming from

a different country -- the educational systems in those countries, for

example, Mexico and Central America, do operate differently than in the

United States. So starting out with very fundamental kinds of workshops

to talk to them about how to prepare for a teachers conference, what

channels they can go through to bring their concerns to the school

district.

And some of this work is already being done by the school district,

and they’re doing a very good job in terms of this, what I call community

and school engagement, but they can’t do it all because of limited

resources, so what we’ll try to do is build upon their efforts,

complement it by continuing to cover some of the topics that they’ve

already covered, but in talking to the parents, also find out if there

are other issues that they would like to learn about that aren’t perhaps

being covered in the curriculum that the school is using.

So those are two definite activities that will be going on here. And

the third activity will be our partnership with THINK Together, who will

be opening a new learning after-school program here. That will be

focusing on fifth- and sixth-graders and some seventh-graders from the

Westside schools here like Wilson Elementary, TeWinkle Middle School.

What our contribution will be there will be recruiting students from

UCI to come and serve as tutors because THINK Together’s model works

entirely on volunteers. We think it’ll be a great relationship because

students at the university, be it through courses or organizational

affiliations, are always interested in doing community service. In fact,

for our majors in social ecology -- the school that we’re located in --

community service learning is a graduation requirement. So we figure that

once students become familiar with our project here, that at least a

certain percentage of them will work here. So we’re looking forward to

that.

Another activity we anticipate doing is a community festival here in

September, around Sept. 16, which is Mexican Independence Day, but we

want to give it a broader event, a community celebration for folks here

on the Westside. So we’ll be putting together a planning committee for

that starting next month. There are a lot of people on our advisory

board, as well as other folks we’ve been working with, who have expressed

a real positive interest in that idea. They think it’s a way of getting

people from different sectors here to come together in a cultural setting

and get to know one another. So we’re very excited about that possibility

because that plays right into our primary role of building relationships.

Q: Any final thoughts?

A: Just that we’re very excited about the possibilities. We’ve put

together a very solid advisory committee with individuals who have

demonstrated their commitment to the city of Costa Mesa generally and

have shown a particular interest in the Westside, and who have vision and

who also want to do things, to talk about what needs to be done and want

to actually see things get done. Also, they’re people who have

established networks within the community here and have the respect of a

lot of people at the grass-roots level, and that’s very important to us

in terms of being able to maintain a sense of a pulse of the concerns of

residents in the area.

So we’re very excited about working with that group and continuing our

partnerships with Vanguard University -- they have a center for ethnic

urban studies and ethnic leadership headed by Dr. Jesse Miranda -- to

focus on creating community change. He’s predominantly focusing on

organizing the churches here, and that’s a very vital institution in

terms of having the ears of residents and being able to get information

to residents and from residents. So we’re very excited and pleased to

have that partnership.

BIO

Age: 47

Occupation: Director of the UC Irvine Community Outreach Center

Residence: Irvine

Education: Bachelor’s degree in sociology from UC Santa Barbara,

master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA

Family: Wife of nine years Vicki, sons Miguel and Danny

Hobbies: Attending sporting events, exercising, reading and spending

time with his wife