Tobacco, the substance that deprives so many of a healthy adulthood — or an adulthood at all — is indirectly improving children’s lives through a new program of the Contra Costa Jewish Community Center.
Thanks to Proposition 10, a tax on cigarettes goes into a state fund earmarked for early childhood development programs. As a result, the JCC and its partner agency, the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay, received a $50,000 grant last year from the Contra Costa Children and Families Commission. The money is being put to work in a number of ways, some unique.
The JCC has already set up an early childhood library, complete with books, movies and even a “little tykes” computer loaded with kid-friendly software. The center has also sponsored parenting peer discussions and academic parent-child workshops.
But the unusual part of the JCC’s new preschool parent education and support program isn’t what’s going on at the center, but what’s happening outside of it. The JCC-JFCS hired a bilingual educator to coordinate early childhood education programs in the heavily Latino Monument Corridor and Bay Point neighborhoods.
“Normally, Latino parents don’t put their kids in preschool,” said Carlos Torres, the program’s outreach and education coordinator.
“They start in kindergarten. So, for the first four years, the kids are normally at home with their mother. The idea of this program is to try to educate the parents with preschool-aged kids to be more connected with education from the beginning. The idea is to reach more Latino parents and give them the important idea that education doesn’t start in kindergarten. It starts in the first year.”
For those who don’t have time or money to send their children to preschool, Torres says he hopes to run a “preschool support program.” He believes children can pick up a solid grasp of both letters and numbers before their 5th birthday, but only if both parents and kids develop strong educational habits.
Parents, he stresses, need to take the time to read and interact with their children, which can be “very tough,” he acknowledges, when both parents work.
“The educational process is not just one side, not just school, but both sides, parents and kids,” said Torres. “The focus is on two main things: How we can get parents to recognize that education begins at home and, of course, with all the materials we have, work with the kids.”
The preschool parent education and support program isn’t the first Latino outreach undertaken by the JFCS, which also runs a mental health agency and employs a caseworker who serves five high schools in the Monument Corridor/Bay Point vicinity.
The JFCS is also augmenting programs aimed at local Bosnian, Afghan and Cambodian communities.
“Already we have a lot of materials the parents at the JCC can use, books and movies. They’re all about helping parents start reading and learning how to help their kids at home,” said Torres. “It’s more than just leaving the kids at school. In Bay Point, I’m concentrating on translating the materials.”
But at both the JCC and on the road, “the project should be very interesting for parents.”