History
In the late 1990s, the San Francisco Bay Area was in the midst of the dot-com boom. As many white, affluent and young people made millions, nearly over night, many working poor Latino immigrants were left behind to deal with the ramifications of gentrification. Many Latino immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and South America who called the Mission their home soon found themselves pushed out of San Francisco's Mission District.
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Sister
Petra Chavez, Founder, and CAMINOS student |
While San Francisco was experiencing this change, Sister Petra Chavez of the Catholic order Sisters of Mercy decided to do something about the growing economic and social gap created by the dot-come phenomenon.
Her vision was to primarily create programming that would enable Latina women to transition from backbreaking and underpaid jobs such as nannies, housecleaners, and restaurant service workers to living wage jobs. Latina women were unable to take advantage of the technological boom happening in the Bay Area.
CAMINOS works to overcome the cyclical nature of poverty caused by lack of information and access to resources.
CAMINOS was founded in 1999 by Sister Petra Chavez to provide access to wide-ranging computer skills training for low-income Latina immigrant women. CAMINOS had four major goals to overcome the cyclical nature of poverty caused by lack of information and access to resources:
- to teach skills that are in demand by employers and that would draw ample wages for self-sufficiency;
- to offer an alternative to the CALWORKS training program which many monolingual and limited English language speakers are unable to access.
- to work to overcome the cyclical nature of poverty caused by lack of information and access to resources;
- to provide classes in Spanish to enable monolingual Spanish speakers and those with limited English language proficiency to be part of a local educational technology training program
Today Caminos occupies three buildings on Valencia Street (between 25th and 26th Streets) which houses three classrooms, a computer repair shop and administrative offices. CAMINOS - Pathways Learning Center now trains over 200 women per year in courses ranging from Computer Essentials, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, HTML and graphic and webdesign; and computer repair, upgrading and networking. Nearly 2,000 working poor Latina immigrant women have found opportunities for self and economic improvement using information technology.
At the heart of CAMINOS is a commitment to the development of women and the elimination of poverty.