In 2002, East Palo Alto community members began noticing the city’s changing demographics, with an influx of immigrant families from Mexico, Central America and South America, said Miriam Yunpanqui, executive director of nonprofit Nuestra Casa.
Nuestra Casa’s founding board members partnered with other local organizations and the city to obtain a grant and eventually create the nonprofit to support the emerging Latino community.
“Our mission was to really support new community members and also provide them with support in civic engagement,” Yunpanqui said.
What started as a grassroots organization, serving East Palo Alto Latinos through English-learning programs and Ravenswood parent engagement, evolved to serve over 9,000 Latinos across the Peninsula through various new avenues.
Over more than two decades, Nuestra Casa, a nonprofit based in East Palo Alto, has set out to uplift Latinos through education, workforce and leadership development and civic engagement, while shifting to address emerging issues like environmental justice.
When Nuestra Casa was first founded, community members were very interested in English language courses. The nonprofit partnered with East Palo Alto school district Ravenswood to use three classrooms for those services, Yunpanqui said.
Parents also wanted to learn how to become more engaged with the school system – so a Nuestra Casa staff member worked as a liaison between parents and the schools and teachers. Years later, the organization created its Parent Academy in an effort to provide parents the resources to navigate the school system and to help them connect with their students more.
Yunpanqui, executive director of Nuestra Casa, grew up in East Palo Alto and joined the organization’s board in 2010.
“It’s been amazing being part of an organization that has really supported the community, and it’s just also been amazing for me to see the transformation of the organization and how it has evolved over these past 23 years,” she said.
In the past decade, Nuestra Casa made a shift toward civil engagement, housing, professional development and environmental justice, among other efforts, Yunpanqui said.
Nuestra Casa partnered with the city of East Palo Alto to create an anti-displacement project to provide information on tenant rights, referrals when families are facing eviction, case management assistance and applications for affordable housing units.
The organization has also expanded to work with people outside of East Palo Alto to Redwood City, North Fair Oaks and Belhaven, attending community fairs, school and library events in an effort to assist as many people as possible.
But Nuestra Casa’s Promotora – or promoter – Program is one of its key outreach efforts.
Promotoras are community ambassadors who live in the communities Nuestra Casa serves, and over the past years, the organization has worked to provide more mentoring opportunities for them.
“This past fall, our promotoras were able to attend a conference in Los Angeles where they were able to connect with a larger network of promotoras, and it’s just been amazing seeing these women grow and develop over all these years,” Yunpanqui said.
Nuestra Casa is also proud of its recent work toward water and environmental justice, she said.
In 2019, the organization issued a community needs assessment among Latinos, African Americans and Pacific Islanders, asking what issues they were most concerned about.
Aside from displacement, water quality was a top priority.
“These two concerns have really impacted our work over the past five years, to the point that we developed an environmental justice program as well as a housing Justice Program and a task force that is specifically looking into water quality,” Yunpanqui said.
Community members are now able to come in and go on field trips to the bay lands to learn more about their environment.
“We want to make sure that their voices are heard and that they have a seat at the table during important meetings,” she said.
Nuestra Casa also walks people through the process of submitting public comment at city meetings to further promote engagement.
So, whether it be regarding air quality, water quality, housing or education, Nuestra Casa aims to shift with the changing-needs of their community and empower Latinos to take action, she said.
Nuestra Casa is a past recipient of the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund, earning a $10,000 grant in 2024. More information, including how to contribute, a list of people who’ve already donated and additional stories about the impact of the Holiday Fund at PaloAltoOnline.com/holiday_fund.
