South Park’s ‘Villa Comunitaria’ Is Community Lifeline For Latinos

The Jardin Infantil Villa Comunitaria hosted during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic became more than a classroom for Guadalupe G. Contreras and her 4-year-old daughter. 

“It was an opportunity for my daughter and I to understand, hey, there is still a society, there is life, life goes on,” Contreras said in Spanish. 

The first-time mother who immigrated from Mexico had been battling postpartum depression, but she said the support she received from Villa Comunitaria was “very motivating because I had no family here, they were the first people who I socialized with.”

Villa Comunitaria is a non-profit organization that provides culturally relevant resources to the Latino community and other communities of color in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood such as: computing classes, financial coaching, rental assistance programs, voter education classes, systems navigation programs for mixed-status families and more. 

The organization was originally founded in 2005 though it was then called the South Park Information and Resource Center. 

Since joining Villa Comunitaria around 2021, Contreras said she has grown and shed harmful ways of parenting by attending child development classes alongside other Latina mothers. 

“We come from a culture where we are taught that you educate [children] by hitting them or with bad words and we say ‘that’s the only way they are going to learn,’ but when you are taught in classes for parents how to educate your child, then you learn that not only are you harming them physically, but also emotionally,” Contreras said.

The experience has left Contreras feeling empowered.

“We break barriers within our community,” she said. 

A community member gives a backpack to a child during Villa Comunitaria’s Dia de la Familia event.

Photo: Provided by Villa Comunitaria

South Park neighbors gathered together at a Villa Comunitaria event.

Photo: Provided by Villa Comunitaria

Other classes that have had a positive impact on the community have been through the various paid “Promotoras” programs, Bilingual Outreach Coordinator, Maribel Pastor, said. 

The Promotoras program is designed to train community members in a field such as gardening or environmental justice, and teach them how to host educational workshops for other neighbors. 

“It’s about creating leadership in the community.” Pastor said. “If a community member sees that another community member is involved and is progressing, that other community member will want to do the same.” 

While Villa Comunitaria’s community building efforts have expanded over the course of 19 years, so has their need to acquire a building of their own, Pastor said. 

The non-profit is currently located in the South Park Neighborhood Center (SPNC), and shares the space with four other community serving organizations.

“The infrastructure, not only for us, but for the whole community in South Park, is lacking,” Pastor said.

South park is made up of nearly 29 percent of Latinos according to neighborhood data.

This has been due to relatively affordable housing costs and the proximity of jobs but today it is grappling with gentrification and has been deemed a ‘High Risk of Displacement’ neighborhood by the City of Seattle.

South Park also lies along the west bank of the Duwamish River, which flooded the entire neighborhood two years ago and led Villa Comunitaria’s resources to become critical to residents, Pastor said.

“The city got involved, because there was aguas servidas, wastewater,” Pastor said.  “There was a health problem and there was nowhere to go for the neighbors. We were not trained in emergency, but we were called, like, ‘okay, Villa Comunitaria, you’re in South Park, you speak Spanish, go and help us.’”

Helping neighbors with case management during that natural disaster became even more difficult because they did not have a space of their own, Pastor said.

Many of these circumstances have led the non-profit to launch a Capital Campaign, which aims to raise funds to acquire a dedicated building. 

Contreras said as the organization continues to grow, neighbors would benefit from Villa Comunitaria having a space to call home.

“I have no doubt that every project and idea they have will be successful because they support the latino community and we need it,” she said.


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