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2 3 6Galarza heads advocacy group

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Mainster honored

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see THE NEXT 50 YEARS continued on page 4

Proceeds benefit RCMA

If RCMA is needed, it will endure`What if immigration from Mexico stopped?

`What if machines replaced strawberry pickers?

`What if they created child-care centers inside retirement homes?

`What if Congress shrank Head Start?

Such “what ifs” hover over RCMA as it heads into its 51st year, and there are no certain answers. A sampling of opinions from RCMA’s leaders produce a variety of thoughts, with two points of consensus:

“You will always have the poor among you.” And if that’s true, we will always have a need for RCMA.

In the face of ceaseless change, RCMA must remain flexible.

“RCMA has done a great job keeping up with change,” said Steve Price, a board member from Immokalee. ”But there’ll always be children with a need.”

The Latino waveSince 1965, RCMA has served low-income families

in rural Florida. That group has become dominated

These RCMA children in Fellsmere – like their RCMA counterparts statewide – are about four-fifths Latino and predominantly the children of immigrants. A slowdown in immigration could change that profile.

A big celebration for a big anniversaryORLANDO – RCMA celebrated its 50th birthday in October with a conference of 400 staff members in Orlando.

Speakers included top executives from the National Head Start Association, the Florida Office of Early

Learning and the National Migrant & Seasonal Head Start Association. The keynote speaker was Janet Murguia, executive director of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s leading advocacy group for Latinos.

“RCMA has not just provided important assistance to farm workers in helping care for their young children, but has made it a mission to help prepare this next generation for the rigors of college and an increasingly competitive job market,” Murguia said.

Four “RCMA babies,” young adults who attended RCMA as children, described how RCMA helped launch them into lives of success. They were: Anasol Roldan of Ruskin, an immigration attorney in Brandon; Charlie Brown of Avon Park, a student leader at the University of Florida; Ilda Martinez of Mulberry, a Gates Millennium Scholar at the University of South Florida; and Isiah Williams of Lake Placid, an academic advisor at Florida State University.

Throughout the two-day conference, professional-development workshops focused on topics such as teaching techniques, regulations by funding agencies, employment and immigration law and helping families.

Ivette Galarza, RCMA’s director of operations, snaps a photo of keynote speaker Janet Murguia (second from right) posing with Isabel Garcia (left), RCMA associate executive director, and Rebeca Millan, RCMA Head Start manager.

by Latino immigrants over the years, and RCMA has responded by assembling a staff that is 80 percent Latino.

Yet immigration is diminishing, at least in the near term. The great tide of immigrants that began in the 1970s included some 12 million Mexicans – and apparently ended with the Great Recession.

‘I felt good being there’At 38, Beatriz Coronado still remembers back to age 3, when she attended RCMA’s child-care center in Palmetto, south of Tampa Bay.

“What I remember is the nice atmosphere,” she said. “There was a lady who was always braiding my hair and just being so loving. It was just a place where I felt good being there … and I liked going.”

She was the daughter of tomato pickers and the granddaughter of a crew leader. Coronado helped on weekends. The family migrated to South Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

When Coronado was 15, she moved away from Palmetto, but not from RCMA. She and her husband settled in Homestead, where RCMA had been founded. Coronado had a daughter Then she began working part-time for RCMA while attending the South Dade Adult Center, studying for, and earning, her high-school diploma.

Soon, a top RCMA manager urged Coronado to try college.

“Really, that was all it took,” she recalled. “I liked school.”

Coronado gradually earned an associate’s degree at Miami-Dade College, and later moved on to a bachelor of applied science in supervision and management.

She progressed at RCMA too, helping to coordinate services for special-needs children. “I truly enjoyed making a difference in their lives,” she said. “That’s when I felt it was important to me to help children with disabilities.”

She became an RCMA health specialist. Two years ago, Coronado was promoted to area coordinator for RCMA in Florida City, at the southern tip of Miami-Dade County. Coronado supervises four child-care centers and about 100 staff members, caring for nearly 300 children.

School remains a place where Coronado likes to be.

“I’d like to get my master’s someday,” she said. “It would be in something related to what I’m doing now.”

Beatriz Coronado

A well-earned breakStudents at RCMA Leadership Academy relax after helping to build patios on their middle-school campus courtyard south of Tampa. The students measured the area, calculated the amount of sand and gravel needed and then laid the concrete pavers. The pavers, tables and other materials were purchased through a $5,000 grant from the PepsiCo Foundation Fund.

A F U N - R A I S E R A N D F U N D - R A I S E R

NAPLES – Even if you have never swung a club, you can contribute to the Lipman Golf Classic, RCMA’s largest annual fund-raiser.

The 17th annual golf tournament, scheduled for April 30 at Naples Heritage Golf & Country Club, is expected to attract up to 120 players. But its financial success relies on sponsors and door-prize donors.

Interested? You can support the tournament by:

• Buying a sponsorship ranging from $250 to $10,000. • Competing in the tournament for $225. • Donating a door prize.

For details, call RCMA’s Angie Alfaro at (239) 658-3560, or email her at angiea@rcma.org.

Whatever you choose will have impact. Proceeds of the golf tournament qualify RCMA for matching funds from the Florida Office of Early Learning, at a 16:1 rate!Strawberry event raises

$77,000 for RCMAPLANT CITY – A fund-raising event created by RCMA Board Member Gary Wishnatzki raised $77,000 for RCMA in February.

The third annual Bright House Networks Strawberry Picking Challenge on Feb. 6 featured 18 corporate-sponsored teams competing on a strawberry farm for the title of “Best Harvest Crew.”

The event was hosted by Wishnatzki’s Wish Farms, Florida’s largest grower and shipper of strawberries, and it showcased the local strawberry industry. Prior to creating the Strawberry Picking Challenge, Wishnatzki supported RCMA with an annual tennis tournament in Tampa.

A choir of third graders from RCMA’s Wimauma Academy opened the event by leading the Pledge of Allegiance and performing several songs.

Third graders from RCMA Wimauma Academy sing in February at the Bright House Networks Strawberry Picking Challenge, staged by Wish Farms in a strawberry farm in Plant City. The annual event raised $77,000 for RCMA.

RCMA invests in adult educationPLANT CITY – A veteran educator of Latino adults has joined RCMA to revive its adult learning centers outside Tampa and in Immokalee.

David Peñaflor is tasked with advancing one of RCMA’s core values: that competent child care includes improving the lives of the children’s parents. Low literacy plagues many of the farm-working families that RCMA serves.

One of Peñaflor’s chief assets is Plazas Comunitarias (Community Spaces), an adult-learning curriculum developed by the Mexican government, which blends written workbooks with online lessons. Working with Mexican consulates in Orlando and Miami, RCMA has used Plazas Comunitarias for years, but has struggled to adapt it to the unpredictable schedules of migrant farm workers.

Peñaflor worked for the Orlando consulate for six years, and has been involved in adult education for decades. He said he sympathizes strongly with people who missed school as children because of their families’ low incomes.

“It is very, very satisfying to me when adults take the next steps through the program,” he said.

Peñaflor is based at RCMA’s Mascotte office, west of Orlando. He is to train volunteer teachers for the adult-education program

in Homestead, which has struggled; and programs in Plant City and Immokalee, which have been dormant.

Peñaflor is based at RCMA’s Mascotte office, west of Orlando. He is to train volunteer teachers for the adult-education program in Homestead, which has struggled; and programs in Plant City and Immokalee, which have been dormant. A musician, Peñaflor also will provide art instruction to preschool teachers and will demonstrate music, songs and games for the children.

The next 50 years

David Peñaflor teaches an adult class in Plant City.

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THE NEXT 50 YEARS continued from page 1Galarza to lead national advocacy groupIvette Galarza, RCMA’s Director of Operations, was elected in February as board chair of the National Head Start Association, the leading advocacy group for the federal early childhood education program.

Galarza was chosen to lead the 49-member board during the NHSA’s Winter Leadership Institute in Arlington, Va. Galarza succeeds Vanessa Rich of Chicago, who passed away in December at age 64.

Galarza, 39, has held a series of supervisory roles at RCMA over the last 15 years. As the recently appointed director of operations, she manages contracts in excess of $60 million. The largest are Head Start contracts.

Galarza said she looked forward to leading “the next generation of commitment” for NHSA and the 1 million children served by Head Start.

“Let’s continue to lead,” she urged the

NHSA members in Arlington. “Let’s be the untiring voice that will not be quiet until every vulnerable child is served with the Head Start model of support.”

“We are bursting with pride over this news,” said Barbara Mainster, RCMA’s executive director. “The NHSA has become a very respected association in Washington now and with Ivette as its leader, it can only get better.”

Founded in 1965, Head Start is a nationwide program of comprehensive child-development services. The nonprofit NHSA is committed to the belief that all children, regardless of their cir-cumstances at birth, deserve a chance to succeed in life. NHSA seeks to support and inspire the Head Start field.

RCMA is Florida’s largest nonprofit child-care provider. More than 60 of RCMA’s 69 child-development centers are funded wholly or partially through Head Start grants. Ivette Galarza

Changes affect centers, community relationsRCMA has hired a new head of its community relations department, and has named three long-time managers to supervise its child-care centers.

Meanwhile, Ivette Galarza was promoted to Director of Operations (see story above).

The new community relations director is Kathleen Roehm, a manager for a succession of businesses and community organizations in central Florida. At RCMA, Roehm takes charge of donor relations and publicity functions.

The three directors of center services collectively supervise the coordinators of RCMA’s 12 area offices. They must insure that RCMA fulfills its mission in every location while complying with multiple layers of government regulations.

Here are the center services directors and the locations where they supervise child-care operations:

Farm group honors MainsterMAITLAND – The leading trade organization for Florida agriculture has saluted Barbara Mainster, RCMA’s executive director, for her life’s work.

Mainster received the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association’s Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes “individuals in Florida agriculture whose life work has made an indelible mark on those around them and who have made a significant difference for the industry.”

The award was a surprise for Mainster as she sat at a luncheon on Sept. 24 at the FFVA’s annual convention. RCMA is a prime beneficiary of the FFVA’s philanthropic activities, and Mainster traditionally attends its convention.

“It was beautiful,” she said. “We go way back with the FFVA, and they have earned huge respect in Tallahassee, in Washington and really, all over the country. This is an honor that I will always treasure.”

Mainster has worked for RCMA for 43 years, including 27 as executive director. She has presided over its growth from three child-care centers to 69. Mainster plans to retire this year, and a search for her successor is under way.

“You couldn’t call her a farmer in the conventional sense, yet Barbara Mainster raises Florida’s most precious crop of all: its children,” said FFVA Chairman Alan Temple, giving Mainster the award during the FFVA’s during the association’s annual convention in Palm Beach.

What is unique about RCMA, Temple said, is that “it doesn’t choose sides between the farm worker and the farm owner. Instead, RCMA brings them together in the common cause of children. Many of RCMA’s most generous donors are agricultural interests, including FFVA and many of its members.

“Barbara makes sure that all of RCMA’s 1,600 employees remember

that parents are the most important influences in their children’s lives,” Temple added. “No matter how little formal education they have received, parents can still inspire their children, support their educations and advocate in the children’s best interest.”

The Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association is a full-service organization serving Florida’s grower-shipper community for more than 70 years. FFVA represents a broad range of crops: vegetables, citrus, tropical fruit, berries, sod, sugar cane, tree crops and more. Its mission is to enhance the business and competitive environment for producing and marketing fruits, vegetables and other crops.

Since then the immigrant population appears to have stabilized. Between 2005 and 2010, the 1.4 million Mexicans immigrating to the U.S. were offset by another 1.4 million who returned to Mexico, according to the Pew Research Center. From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families left the U.S. for Mexico, while an estimated 870,000 Mexicans came to the U.S., the Center reported.

Meanwhile, birth rates in Mexico have plunged. In 1960, the average Mexican woman had seven children; today that rate has fallen to 2.3 children. The population of young Mexican workers likeliest to immigrate into the U.S. is no longer growing.

The Hispanic population in the United States nevertheless is growing, thanks to births, a huge echo of the immigration boom. Yet those Hispanics – like most second- and third-generation immigrants throughout U.S. history – are more affluent and Americanized than their parents – and less likely to need RCMA.

Barbara Mainster, RCMA’s long-time executive director, notes that the farm workers that RCMA originally served were not immigrants. But when Mexicans flooded into Florida agriculture, RCMA adapted by hiring hundreds of them. RCMA will continue to adapt, and farm communities will continue to need it, Mainster said.

“Rural areas have always had low-income people,” she said.

Rough pickingThe lower supply of immigrants is

prompting both the immigrants and Florida farmers to seek alternatives.

As the economy has improved, farmers have watched as their workers were lured away by landscapers, nursery owners and the construction industry.

“People see farm work as the entry level into society,” said Michael Bayer, an RCMA board member and former wage and hour investigator with the U.S. Labor Department. “As soon as you can move on to something else, you move on.”

Gary Wishnatzki, an RCMA Board member and Florida’s leading shipper of strawberries, has complained of having to choose which fields won’t be picked for lack of farm workers. He leads an investor group that is developing a mechanical strawberry picker.

“I have more people calling me, asking about new ways to harvest crops than I’ve seen in the 35 years I’ve been doing this,” said Mike Stuart, president of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, the state’s leading agricultural trade group. Stuart, who also is president of the RCMA Board of Directors,

says farm labor shortages have had “a profound effect” on Florida farms.

Meanwhile, in California, tomato-picking machines have been used. They are faster and cheaper than human hands, but much rougher on the tomatoes.

Such trends bring into question how much RCMA’s core “market” of farm-working families may shrink long-term. But as with immigrants, RCMA has never been limited to farm-worker families and for years has served families in non-agricultural circumstances. For now, RCMA’s facilities are full, and many have waiting lists.

Wendell Rollason, the white-haired crusader who first set RCMA onto a successful path, tried often to discern the future. “It’s my personal prediction that 60 percent of field jobs in Florida will be eliminated in the next decade by mechanization,” he said – in 1978. It hasn’t happened, in nearly four decades.

Political windsLess than three years ago, RCMA’s primary

funding stream fell prey to across-the-board budget cuts known in Congress as a “sequester.” On short notice, RCMA was forced to permanently close two child-care centers and to suspend operations at its centers for migrant families two weeks before those families were expected to leave town for the summer.

The sequester was a harsh reminder that government funding is at the mercy of political winds.

Soon, the gloom of 2013 gave way to optimism. The next federal budget restored what had been cut, much of it retroactively. Last year, RCMA won a $3.7 million Head Start grant, part of a nationwide package of $500 million.

In both the education and political realms, early-childhood education has received increasing respect.

Over the last two years, President Obama has organized support for sweeping expansions and reform of early-childhood education. The White House has cited research showing that children who receive quality preschool grow up to be healthier, more productive and more prosperous.

If such recognition continues to grow, RCMA will play an increasing role in helping young, rural children.

Evolving with careTo predict how RCMA may change in future

years, consider how it won’t change.

RCMA’s top managers and Board members agree that RCMA should continue to honor

several core policies:

• It will hire teachers with backgrounds similar to the families they will serve.

• It will engage parents extensively, encouraging them to support their children’s educations.

• It will maintain close friendships with both farm workers and farm owners.

• It will strive to be a national model of multicultural early-childhood education.If RCMA expands at all, it is likely to do so

carefully. It’s currently building only two child-care centers – both in neighborhoods that have shown a strong need for RCMA child care.

Future capital projects may focus on charter schools. Since 2000, RCMA has operated elementary-level charter schools in Immokalee and outside Tampa. The schools have succeeded by every measure at educating and inspiring children from the same low-income communities that RCMA child-care centers serve. RCMA charter schools nurture children for as many as nine years in cozy climates sensitive to their Latino culture.

Board member Bill Ferrari of St. Petersburg has volunteered for years at RCMA Wimauma Academy, the Tampa-area charter. He supports more charters in areas where RCMA operates large clusters of child-care centers.

“Many, many children could benefit from the bilingual, bicultural model of education that RCMA has established in the charter schools,” Ferrari said. “They serve a great purpose.”

Recently, RCMA managers shared a video about a child-care center operating inside a Seattle assisted-living facility. Many of the elderly transformed from lethargy to delight when children entered the room.

Mainster was so moved that she contacted a Tampa Bay developer to discuss the idea.

“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” she said. “If not in Florida, then where?”

Mike Stuart

Bill Ferrari

Newcomers join RCMA boardSandra “Sandy” Hightower of Lakeland and Chuck Allison of Orlando were elected on Jan. 25 to the RCMA Board of Directors.

Hightower is a retired educator who helped revive the early-childhood education program at Polk Community College in Lakeland.

“I loved working with the very conscientious RCMA and other early-childhood education providers,” Hightower says.

Allison spent a career working for Duda and other agribusinesses before he retired and began farming full time. Allison and his wife Vesna farm blueberries, citrus, cattle and hay.  They split their time between their home in Orlando and Spring Valley Farms in Umatilla.

Soon after Allison and his wife, Vesna, took over their farm, they arranged with RCMA for child-care for the farm workers. Each May, at the end of the blueberry harvest, the Allisons invite hundreds of friends to Umatilla for a U-Pick that benefits RCMA. The event last spring generated a donation of $19,000.

Sandy Hightower

Chuck Allison

New center for 136 childrenA new RCMA child-care center in Dover – east of Tampa – is scheduled to open in April. The $3 million center will accommodate 136 children in a strawberry-farming area where RCMA has maintained some of its longest waiting lists.

10 butterflies, 1 turtleTen children in the “Butterflies” class at RCMA’s Children’s House Child Development Center sing Tim the Tiny Turtle to guests at a party RCMA hosted on Dec. 1. Between 2006 and 2010, donors in nearby Vero Beach raised more than $1 million `to complete Children’s House.

Kathleen Roehm

Kathy Vega – Hillsborough, Marion, Palatka, Volusia, Pasco, Manatee, Orange and Lake counties.

Irma Chappa – Highlands, Hendry, Glades, DeSoto, Hardee and Polk counties, and the Florida City area of Miami-Dade County.

Marbelia Zamarripa – Collier, Lee, Indian River, Glades and Palm Beach counties, and the Homestead area of Miami-Dade County.

Chappa previously supervised 15 area coordinators. “It was too much,” she said. “Now we can act as much as we react. We can take initiatives that are needed.”

Barbara Mainster accepts the Distinguished Service Award from Alan Temple, chairman of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association.

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THE NEXT 50 YEARS continued from page 1Galarza to lead national advocacy groupIvette Galarza, RCMA’s Director of Operations, was elected in February as board chair of the National Head Start Association, the leading advocacy group for the federal early childhood education program.

Galarza was chosen to lead the 49-member board during the NHSA’s Winter Leadership Institute in Arlington, Va. Galarza succeeds Vanessa Rich of Chicago, who passed away in December at age 64.

Galarza, 39, has held a series of supervisory roles at RCMA over the last 15 years. As the recently appointed director of operations, she manages contracts in excess of $60 million. The largest are Head Start contracts.

Galarza said she looked forward to leading “the next generation of commitment” for NHSA and the 1 million children served by Head Start.

“Let’s continue to lead,” she urged the

NHSA members in Arlington. “Let’s be the untiring voice that will not be quiet until every vulnerable child is served with the Head Start model of support.”

“We are bursting with pride over this news,” said Barbara Mainster, RCMA’s executive director. “The NHSA has become a very respected association in Washington now and with Ivette as its leader, it can only get better.”

Founded in 1965, Head Start is a nationwide program of comprehensive child-development services. The nonprofit NHSA is committed to the belief that all children, regardless of their cir-cumstances at birth, deserve a chance to succeed in life. NHSA seeks to support and inspire the Head Start field.

RCMA is Florida’s largest nonprofit child-care provider. More than 60 of RCMA’s 69 child-development centers are funded wholly or partially through Head Start grants. Ivette Galarza

Changes affect centers, community relationsRCMA has hired a new head of its community relations department, and has named three long-time managers to supervise its child-care centers.

Meanwhile, Ivette Galarza was promoted to Director of Operations (see story above).

The new community relations director is Kathleen Roehm, a manager for a succession of businesses and community organizations in central Florida. At RCMA, Roehm takes charge of donor relations and publicity functions.

The three directors of center services collectively supervise the coordinators of RCMA’s 12 area offices. They must insure that RCMA fulfills its mission in every location while complying with multiple layers of government regulations.

Here are the center services directors and the locations where they supervise child-care operations:

Farm group honors MainsterMAITLAND – The leading trade organization for Florida agriculture has saluted Barbara Mainster, RCMA’s executive director, for her life’s work.

Mainster received the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association’s Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes “individuals in Florida agriculture whose life work has made an indelible mark on those around them and who have made a significant difference for the industry.”

The award was a surprise for Mainster as she sat at a luncheon on Sept. 24 at the FFVA’s annual convention. RCMA is a prime beneficiary of the FFVA’s philanthropic activities, and Mainster traditionally attends its convention.

“It was beautiful,” she said. “We go way back with the FFVA, and they have earned huge respect in Tallahassee, in Washington and really, all over the country. This is an honor that I will always treasure.”

Mainster has worked for RCMA for 43 years, including 27 as executive director. She has presided over its growth from three child-care centers to 69. Mainster plans to retire this year, and a search for her successor is under way.

“You couldn’t call her a farmer in the conventional sense, yet Barbara Mainster raises Florida’s most precious crop of all: its children,” said FFVA Chairman Alan Temple, giving Mainster the award during the FFVA’s during the association’s annual convention in Palm Beach.

What is unique about RCMA, Temple said, is that “it doesn’t choose sides between the farm worker and the farm owner. Instead, RCMA brings them together in the common cause of children. Many of RCMA’s most generous donors are agricultural interests, including FFVA and many of its members.

“Barbara makes sure that all of RCMA’s 1,600 employees remember

that parents are the most important influences in their children’s lives,” Temple added. “No matter how little formal education they have received, parents can still inspire their children, support their educations and advocate in the children’s best interest.”

The Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association is a full-service organization serving Florida’s grower-shipper community for more than 70 years. FFVA represents a broad range of crops: vegetables, citrus, tropical fruit, berries, sod, sugar cane, tree crops and more. Its mission is to enhance the business and competitive environment for producing and marketing fruits, vegetables and other crops.

Since then the immigrant population appears to have stabilized. Between 2005 and 2010, the 1.4 million Mexicans immigrating to the U.S. were offset by another 1.4 million who returned to Mexico, according to the Pew Research Center. From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families left the U.S. for Mexico, while an estimated 870,000 Mexicans came to the U.S., the Center reported.

Meanwhile, birth rates in Mexico have plunged. In 1960, the average Mexican woman had seven children; today that rate has fallen to 2.3 children. The population of young Mexican workers likeliest to immigrate into the U.S. is no longer growing.

The Hispanic population in the United States nevertheless is growing, thanks to births, a huge echo of the immigration boom. Yet those Hispanics – like most second- and third-generation immigrants throughout U.S. history – are more affluent and Americanized than their parents – and less likely to need RCMA.

Barbara Mainster, RCMA’s long-time executive director, notes that the farm workers that RCMA originally served were not immigrants. But when Mexicans flooded into Florida agriculture, RCMA adapted by hiring hundreds of them. RCMA will continue to adapt, and farm communities will continue to need it, Mainster said.

“Rural areas have always had low-income people,” she said.

Rough pickingThe lower supply of immigrants is

prompting both the immigrants and Florida farmers to seek alternatives.

As the economy has improved, farmers have watched as their workers were lured away by landscapers, nursery owners and the construction industry.

“People see farm work as the entry level into society,” said Michael Bayer, an RCMA board member and former wage and hour investigator with the U.S. Labor Department. “As soon as you can move on to something else, you move on.”

Gary Wishnatzki, an RCMA Board member and Florida’s leading shipper of strawberries, has complained of having to choose which fields won’t be picked for lack of farm workers. He leads an investor group that is developing a mechanical strawberry picker.

“I have more people calling me, asking about new ways to harvest crops than I’ve seen in the 35 years I’ve been doing this,” said Mike Stuart, president of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, the state’s leading agricultural trade group. Stuart, who also is president of the RCMA Board of Directors,

says farm labor shortages have had “a profound effect” on Florida farms.

Meanwhile, in California, tomato-picking machines have been used. They are faster and cheaper than human hands, but much rougher on the tomatoes.

Such trends bring into question how much RCMA’s core “market” of farm-working families may shrink long-term. But as with immigrants, RCMA has never been limited to farm-worker families and for years has served families in non-agricultural circumstances. For now, RCMA’s facilities are full, and many have waiting lists.

Wendell Rollason, the white-haired crusader who first set RCMA onto a successful path, tried often to discern the future. “It’s my personal prediction that 60 percent of field jobs in Florida will be eliminated in the next decade by mechanization,” he said – in 1978. It hasn’t happened, in nearly four decades.

Political windsLess than three years ago, RCMA’s primary

funding stream fell prey to across-the-board budget cuts known in Congress as a “sequester.” On short notice, RCMA was forced to permanently close two child-care centers and to suspend operations at its centers for migrant families two weeks before those families were expected to leave town for the summer.

The sequester was a harsh reminder that government funding is at the mercy of political winds.

Soon, the gloom of 2013 gave way to optimism. The next federal budget restored what had been cut, much of it retroactively. Last year, RCMA won a $3.7 million Head Start grant, part of a nationwide package of $500 million.

In both the education and political realms, early-childhood education has received increasing respect.

Over the last two years, President Obama has organized support for sweeping expansions and reform of early-childhood education. The White House has cited research showing that children who receive quality preschool grow up to be healthier, more productive and more prosperous.

If such recognition continues to grow, RCMA will play an increasing role in helping young, rural children.

Evolving with careTo predict how RCMA may change in future

years, consider how it won’t change.

RCMA’s top managers and Board members agree that RCMA should continue to honor

several core policies:

• It will hire teachers with backgrounds similar to the families they will serve.

• It will engage parents extensively, encouraging them to support their children’s educations.

• It will maintain close friendships with both farm workers and farm owners.

• It will strive to be a national model of multicultural early-childhood education.If RCMA expands at all, it is likely to do so

carefully. It’s currently building only two child-care centers – both in neighborhoods that have shown a strong need for RCMA child care.

Future capital projects may focus on charter schools. Since 2000, RCMA has operated elementary-level charter schools in Immokalee and outside Tampa. The schools have succeeded by every measure at educating and inspiring children from the same low-income communities that RCMA child-care centers serve. RCMA charter schools nurture children for as many as nine years in cozy climates sensitive to their Latino culture.

Board member Bill Ferrari of St. Petersburg has volunteered for years at RCMA Wimauma Academy, the Tampa-area charter. He supports more charters in areas where RCMA operates large clusters of child-care centers.

“Many, many children could benefit from the bilingual, bicultural model of education that RCMA has established in the charter schools,” Ferrari said. “They serve a great purpose.”

Recently, RCMA managers shared a video about a child-care center operating inside a Seattle assisted-living facility. Many of the elderly transformed from lethargy to delight when children entered the room.

Mainster was so moved that she contacted a Tampa Bay developer to discuss the idea.

“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” she said. “If not in Florida, then where?”

Mike Stuart

Bill Ferrari

Newcomers join RCMA boardSandra “Sandy” Hightower of Lakeland and Chuck Allison of Orlando were elected on Jan. 25 to the RCMA Board of Directors.

Hightower is a retired educator who helped revive the early-childhood education program at Polk Community College in Lakeland.

“I loved working with the very conscientious RCMA and other early-childhood education providers,” Hightower says.

Allison spent a career working for Duda and other agribusinesses before he retired and began farming full time. Allison and his wife Vesna farm blueberries, citrus, cattle and hay.  They split their time between their home in Orlando and Spring Valley Farms in Umatilla.

Soon after Allison and his wife, Vesna, took over their farm, they arranged with RCMA for child-care for the farm workers. Each May, at the end of the blueberry harvest, the Allisons invite hundreds of friends to Umatilla for a U-Pick that benefits RCMA. The event last spring generated a donation of $19,000.

Sandy Hightower

Chuck Allison

New center for 136 childrenA new RCMA child-care center in Dover – east of Tampa – is scheduled to open in April. The $3 million center will accommodate 136 children in a strawberry-farming area where RCMA has maintained some of its longest waiting lists.

10 butterflies, 1 turtleTen children in the “Butterflies” class at RCMA’s Children’s House Child Development Center sing Tim the Tiny Turtle to guests at a party RCMA hosted on Dec. 1. Between 2006 and 2010, donors in nearby Vero Beach raised more than $1 million `to complete Children’s House.

Kathleen Roehm

Kathy Vega – Hillsborough, Marion, Palatka, Volusia, Pasco, Manatee, Orange and Lake counties.

Irma Chappa – Highlands, Hendry, Glades, DeSoto, Hardee and Polk counties, and the Florida City area of Miami-Dade County.

Marbelia Zamarripa – Collier, Lee, Indian River, Glades and Palm Beach counties, and the Homestead area of Miami-Dade County.

Chappa previously supervised 15 area coordinators. “It was too much,” she said. “Now we can act as much as we react. We can take initiatives that are needed.”

Barbara Mainster accepts the Distinguished Service Award from Alan Temple, chairman of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association.

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THE NEXT 50 YEARS continued from page 1Galarza to lead national advocacy groupIvette Galarza, RCMA’s Director of Operations, was elected in February as board chair of the National Head Start Association, the leading advocacy group for the federal early childhood education program.

Galarza was chosen to lead the 49-member board during the NHSA’s Winter Leadership Institute in Arlington, Va. Galarza succeeds Vanessa Rich of Chicago, who passed away in December at age 64.

Galarza, 39, has held a series of supervisory roles at RCMA over the last 15 years. As the recently appointed director of operations, she manages contracts in excess of $60 million. The largest are Head Start contracts.

Galarza said she looked forward to leading “the next generation of commitment” for NHSA and the 1 million children served by Head Start.

“Let’s continue to lead,” she urged the

NHSA members in Arlington. “Let’s be the untiring voice that will not be quiet until every vulnerable child is served with the Head Start model of support.”

“We are bursting with pride over this news,” said Barbara Mainster, RCMA’s executive director. “The NHSA has become a very respected association in Washington now and with Ivette as its leader, it can only get better.”

Founded in 1965, Head Start is a nationwide program of comprehensive child-development services. The nonprofit NHSA is committed to the belief that all children, regardless of their cir-cumstances at birth, deserve a chance to succeed in life. NHSA seeks to support and inspire the Head Start field.

RCMA is Florida’s largest nonprofit child-care provider. More than 60 of RCMA’s 69 child-development centers are funded wholly or partially through Head Start grants. Ivette Galarza

Changes affect centers, community relationsRCMA has hired a new head of its community relations department, and has named three long-time managers to supervise its child-care centers.

Meanwhile, Ivette Galarza was promoted to Director of Operations (see story above).

The new community relations director is Kathleen Roehm, a manager for a succession of businesses and community organizations in central Florida. At RCMA, Roehm takes charge of donor relations and publicity functions.

The three directors of center services collectively supervise the coordinators of RCMA’s 12 area offices. They must insure that RCMA fulfills its mission in every location while complying with multiple layers of government regulations.

Here are the center services directors and the locations where they supervise child-care operations:

Farm group honors MainsterMAITLAND – The leading trade organization for Florida agriculture has saluted Barbara Mainster, RCMA’s executive director, for her life’s work.

Mainster received the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association’s Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes “individuals in Florida agriculture whose life work has made an indelible mark on those around them and who have made a significant difference for the industry.”

The award was a surprise for Mainster as she sat at a luncheon on Sept. 24 at the FFVA’s annual convention. RCMA is a prime beneficiary of the FFVA’s philanthropic activities, and Mainster traditionally attends its convention.

“It was beautiful,” she said. “We go way back with the FFVA, and they have earned huge respect in Tallahassee, in Washington and really, all over the country. This is an honor that I will always treasure.”

Mainster has worked for RCMA for 43 years, including 27 as executive director. She has presided over its growth from three child-care centers to 69. Mainster plans to retire this year, and a search for her successor is under way.

“You couldn’t call her a farmer in the conventional sense, yet Barbara Mainster raises Florida’s most precious crop of all: its children,” said FFVA Chairman Alan Temple, giving Mainster the award during the FFVA’s during the association’s annual convention in Palm Beach.

What is unique about RCMA, Temple said, is that “it doesn’t choose sides between the farm worker and the farm owner. Instead, RCMA brings them together in the common cause of children. Many of RCMA’s most generous donors are agricultural interests, including FFVA and many of its members.

“Barbara makes sure that all of RCMA’s 1,600 employees remember

that parents are the most important influences in their children’s lives,” Temple added. “No matter how little formal education they have received, parents can still inspire their children, support their educations and advocate in the children’s best interest.”

The Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association is a full-service organization serving Florida’s grower-shipper community for more than 70 years. FFVA represents a broad range of crops: vegetables, citrus, tropical fruit, berries, sod, sugar cane, tree crops and more. Its mission is to enhance the business and competitive environment for producing and marketing fruits, vegetables and other crops.

Since then the immigrant population appears to have stabilized. Between 2005 and 2010, the 1.4 million Mexicans immigrating to the U.S. were offset by another 1.4 million who returned to Mexico, according to the Pew Research Center. From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families left the U.S. for Mexico, while an estimated 870,000 Mexicans came to the U.S., the Center reported.

Meanwhile, birth rates in Mexico have plunged. In 1960, the average Mexican woman had seven children; today that rate has fallen to 2.3 children. The population of young Mexican workers likeliest to immigrate into the U.S. is no longer growing.

The Hispanic population in the United States nevertheless is growing, thanks to births, a huge echo of the immigration boom. Yet those Hispanics – like most second- and third-generation immigrants throughout U.S. history – are more affluent and Americanized than their parents – and less likely to need RCMA.

Barbara Mainster, RCMA’s long-time executive director, notes that the farm workers that RCMA originally served were not immigrants. But when Mexicans flooded into Florida agriculture, RCMA adapted by hiring hundreds of them. RCMA will continue to adapt, and farm communities will continue to need it, Mainster said.

“Rural areas have always had low-income people,” she said.

Rough pickingThe lower supply of immigrants is

prompting both the immigrants and Florida farmers to seek alternatives.

As the economy has improved, farmers have watched as their workers were lured away by landscapers, nursery owners and the construction industry.

“People see farm work as the entry level into society,” said Michael Bayer, an RCMA board member and former wage and hour investigator with the U.S. Labor Department. “As soon as you can move on to something else, you move on.”

Gary Wishnatzki, an RCMA Board member and Florida’s leading shipper of strawberries, has complained of having to choose which fields won’t be picked for lack of farm workers. He leads an investor group that is developing a mechanical strawberry picker.

“I have more people calling me, asking about new ways to harvest crops than I’ve seen in the 35 years I’ve been doing this,” said Mike Stuart, president of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, the state’s leading agricultural trade group. Stuart, who also is president of the RCMA Board of Directors,

says farm labor shortages have had “a profound effect” on Florida farms.

Meanwhile, in California, tomato-picking machines have been used. They are faster and cheaper than human hands, but much rougher on the tomatoes.

Such trends bring into question how much RCMA’s core “market” of farm-working families may shrink long-term. But as with immigrants, RCMA has never been limited to farm-worker families and for years has served families in non-agricultural circumstances. For now, RCMA’s facilities are full, and many have waiting lists.

Wendell Rollason, the white-haired crusader who first set RCMA onto a successful path, tried often to discern the future. “It’s my personal prediction that 60 percent of field jobs in Florida will be eliminated in the next decade by mechanization,” he said – in 1978. It hasn’t happened, in nearly four decades.

Political windsLess than three years ago, RCMA’s primary

funding stream fell prey to across-the-board budget cuts known in Congress as a “sequester.” On short notice, RCMA was forced to permanently close two child-care centers and to suspend operations at its centers for migrant families two weeks before those families were expected to leave town for the summer.

The sequester was a harsh reminder that government funding is at the mercy of political winds.

Soon, the gloom of 2013 gave way to optimism. The next federal budget restored what had been cut, much of it retroactively. Last year, RCMA won a $3.7 million Head Start grant, part of a nationwide package of $500 million.

In both the education and political realms, early-childhood education has received increasing respect.

Over the last two years, President Obama has organized support for sweeping expansions and reform of early-childhood education. The White House has cited research showing that children who receive quality preschool grow up to be healthier, more productive and more prosperous.

If such recognition continues to grow, RCMA will play an increasing role in helping young, rural children.

Evolving with careTo predict how RCMA may change in future

years, consider how it won’t change.

RCMA’s top managers and Board members agree that RCMA should continue to honor

several core policies:

• It will hire teachers with backgrounds similar to the families they will serve.

• It will engage parents extensively, encouraging them to support their children’s educations.

• It will maintain close friendships with both farm workers and farm owners.

• It will strive to be a national model of multicultural early-childhood education.If RCMA expands at all, it is likely to do so

carefully. It’s currently building only two child-care centers – both in neighborhoods that have shown a strong need for RCMA child care.

Future capital projects may focus on charter schools. Since 2000, RCMA has operated elementary-level charter schools in Immokalee and outside Tampa. The schools have succeeded by every measure at educating and inspiring children from the same low-income communities that RCMA child-care centers serve. RCMA charter schools nurture children for as many as nine years in cozy climates sensitive to their Latino culture.

Board member Bill Ferrari of St. Petersburg has volunteered for years at RCMA Wimauma Academy, the Tampa-area charter. He supports more charters in areas where RCMA operates large clusters of child-care centers.

“Many, many children could benefit from the bilingual, bicultural model of education that RCMA has established in the charter schools,” Ferrari said. “They serve a great purpose.”

Recently, RCMA managers shared a video about a child-care center operating inside a Seattle assisted-living facility. Many of the elderly transformed from lethargy to delight when children entered the room.

Mainster was so moved that she contacted a Tampa Bay developer to discuss the idea.

“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” she said. “If not in Florida, then where?”

Mike Stuart

Bill Ferrari

Newcomers join RCMA boardSandra “Sandy” Hightower of Lakeland and Chuck Allison of Orlando were elected on Jan. 25 to the RCMA Board of Directors.

Hightower is a retired educator who helped revive the early-childhood education program at Polk Community College in Lakeland.

“I loved working with the very conscientious RCMA and other early-childhood education providers,” Hightower says.

Allison spent a career working for Duda and other agribusinesses before he retired and began farming full time. Allison and his wife Vesna farm blueberries, citrus, cattle and hay.  They split their time between their home in Orlando and Spring Valley Farms in Umatilla.

Soon after Allison and his wife, Vesna, took over their farm, they arranged with RCMA for child-care for the farm workers. Each May, at the end of the blueberry harvest, the Allisons invite hundreds of friends to Umatilla for a U-Pick that benefits RCMA. The event last spring generated a donation of $19,000.

Sandy Hightower

Chuck Allison

New center for 136 childrenA new RCMA child-care center in Dover – east of Tampa – is scheduled to open in April. The $3 million center will accommodate 136 children in a strawberry-farming area where RCMA has maintained some of its longest waiting lists.

10 butterflies, 1 turtleTen children in the “Butterflies” class at RCMA’s Children’s House Child Development Center sing Tim the Tiny Turtle to guests at a party RCMA hosted on Dec. 1. Between 2006 and 2010, donors in nearby Vero Beach raised more than $1 million `to complete Children’s House.

Kathleen Roehm

Kathy Vega – Hillsborough, Marion, Palatka, Volusia, Pasco, Manatee, Orange and Lake counties.

Irma Chappa – Highlands, Hendry, Glades, DeSoto, Hardee and Polk counties, and the Florida City area of Miami-Dade County.

Marbelia Zamarripa – Collier, Lee, Indian River, Glades and Palm Beach counties, and the Homestead area of Miami-Dade County.

Chappa previously supervised 15 area coordinators. “It was too much,” she said. “Now we can act as much as we react. We can take initiatives that are needed.”

Barbara Mainster accepts the Distinguished Service Award from Alan Temple, chairman of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association.

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Redlands Christian Migrant Association402 West Main Street / Immokalee, Florida 34142(239) 658-3560 / www.rcma.org

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P A I DPERMIT #1

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2 3 6Galarza heads advocacy group

5

Mainster honored

6

see THE NEXT 50 YEARS continued on page 4

Proceeds benefit RCMA

If RCMA is needed, it will endure`What if immigration from Mexico stopped?

`What if machines replaced strawberry pickers?

`What if they created child-care centers inside retirement homes?

`What if Congress shrank Head Start?

Such “what ifs” hover over RCMA as it heads into its 51st year, and there are no certain answers. A sampling of opinions from RCMA’s leaders produce a variety of thoughts, with two points of consensus:

“You will always have the poor among you.” And if that’s true, we will always have a need for RCMA.

In the face of ceaseless change, RCMA must remain flexible.

“RCMA has done a great job keeping up with change,” said Steve Price, a board member from Immokalee. ”But there’ll always be children with a need.”

The Latino waveSince 1965, RCMA has served low-income families

in rural Florida. That group has become dominated

These RCMA children in Fellsmere – like their RCMA counterparts statewide – are about four-fifths Latino and predominantly the children of immigrants. A slowdown in immigration could change that profile.

A big celebration for a big anniversaryORLANDO – RCMA celebrated its 50th birthday in October with a conference of 400 staff members in Orlando.

Speakers included top executives from the National Head Start Association, the Florida Office of Early

Learning and the National Migrant & Seasonal Head Start Association. The keynote speaker was Janet Murguia, executive director of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s leading advocacy group for Latinos.

“RCMA has not just provided important assistance to farm workers in helping care for their young children, but has made it a mission to help prepare this next generation for the rigors of college and an increasingly competitive job market,” Murguia said.

Four “RCMA babies,” young adults who attended RCMA as children, described how RCMA helped launch them into lives of success. They were: Anasol Roldan of Ruskin, an immigration attorney in Brandon; Charlie Brown of Avon Park, a student leader at the University of Florida; Ilda Martinez of Mulberry, a Gates Millennium Scholar at the University of South Florida; and Isiah Williams of Lake Placid, an academic advisor at Florida State University.

Throughout the two-day conference, professional-development workshops focused on topics such as teaching techniques, regulations by funding agencies, employment and immigration law and helping families.

Ivette Galarza, RCMA’s director of operations, snaps a photo of keynote speaker Janet Murguia (second from right) posing with Isabel Garcia (left), RCMA associate executive director, and Rebeca Millan, RCMA Head Start manager.

by Latino immigrants over the years, and RCMA has responded by assembling a staff that is 80 percent Latino.

Yet immigration is diminishing, at least in the near term. The great tide of immigrants that began in the 1970s included some 12 million Mexicans – and apparently ended with the Great Recession.

‘I felt good being there’At 38, Beatriz Coronado still remembers back to age 3, when she attended RCMA’s child-care center in Palmetto, south of Tampa Bay.

“What I remember is the nice atmosphere,” she said. “There was a lady who was always braiding my hair and just being so loving. It was just a place where I felt good being there … and I liked going.”

She was the daughter of tomato pickers and the granddaughter of a crew leader. Coronado helped on weekends. The family migrated to South Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

When Coronado was 15, she moved away from Palmetto, but not from RCMA. She and her husband settled in Homestead, where RCMA had been founded. Coronado had a daughter Then she began working part-time for RCMA while attending the South Dade Adult Center, studying for, and earning, her high-school diploma.

Soon, a top RCMA manager urged Coronado to try college.

“Really, that was all it took,” she recalled. “I liked school.”

Coronado gradually earned an associate’s degree at Miami-Dade College, and later moved on to a bachelor of applied science in supervision and management.

She progressed at RCMA too, helping to coordinate services for special-needs children. “I truly enjoyed making a difference in their lives,” she said. “That’s when I felt it was important to me to help children with disabilities.”

She became an RCMA health specialist. Two years ago, Coronado was promoted to area coordinator for RCMA in Florida City, at the southern tip of Miami-Dade County. Coronado supervises four child-care centers and about 100 staff members, caring for nearly 300 children.

School remains a place where Coronado likes to be.

“I’d like to get my master’s someday,” she said. “It would be in something related to what I’m doing now.”

Beatriz Coronado

A well-earned breakStudents at RCMA Leadership Academy relax after helping to build patios on their middle-school campus courtyard south of Tampa. The students measured the area, calculated the amount of sand and gravel needed and then laid the concrete pavers. The pavers, tables and other materials were purchased through a $5,000 grant from the PepsiCo Foundation Fund.

A F U N - R A I S E R A N D F U N D - R A I S E R

NAPLES – Even if you have never swung a club, you can contribute to the Lipman Golf Classic, RCMA’s largest annual fund-raiser.

The 17th annual golf tournament, scheduled for April 30 at Naples Heritage Golf & Country Club, is expected to attract up to 120 players. But its financial success relies on sponsors and door-prize donors.

Interested? You can support the tournament by:

• Buying a sponsorship ranging from $250 to $10,000. • Competing in the tournament for $225. • Donating a door prize.

For details, call RCMA’s Angie Alfaro at (239) 658-3560, or email her at angiea@rcma.org.

Whatever you choose will have impact. Proceeds of the golf tournament qualify RCMA for matching funds from the Florida Office of Early Learning, at a 16:1 rate!Strawberry event raises

$77,000 for RCMAPLANT CITY – A fund-raising event created by RCMA Board Member Gary Wishnatzki raised $77,000 for RCMA in February.

The third annual Bright House Networks Strawberry Picking Challenge on Feb. 6 featured 18 corporate-sponsored teams competing on a strawberry farm for the title of “Best Harvest Crew.”

The event was hosted by Wishnatzki’s Wish Farms, Florida’s largest grower and shipper of strawberries, and it showcased the local strawberry industry. Prior to creating the Strawberry Picking Challenge, Wishnatzki supported RCMA with an annual tennis tournament in Tampa.

A choir of third graders from RCMA’s Wimauma Academy opened the event by leading the Pledge of Allegiance and performing several songs.

Third graders from RCMA Wimauma Academy sing in February at the Bright House Networks Strawberry Picking Challenge, staged by Wish Farms in a strawberry farm in Plant City. The annual event raised $77,000 for RCMA.

RCMA invests in adult educationPLANT CITY – A veteran educator of Latino adults has joined RCMA to revive its adult learning centers outside Tampa and in Immokalee.

David Peñaflor is tasked with advancing one of RCMA’s core values: that competent child care includes improving the lives of the children’s parents. Low literacy plagues many of the farm-working families that RCMA serves.

One of Peñaflor’s chief assets is Plazas Comunitarias (Community Spaces), an adult-learning curriculum developed by the Mexican government, which blends written workbooks with online lessons. Working with Mexican consulates in Orlando and Miami, RCMA has used Plazas Comunitarias for years, but has struggled to adapt it to the unpredictable schedules of migrant farm workers.

Peñaflor worked for the Orlando consulate for six years, and has been involved in adult education for decades. He said he sympathizes strongly with people who missed school as children because of their families’ low incomes.

“It is very, very satisfying to me when adults take the next steps through the program,” he said.

Peñaflor is based at RCMA’s Mascotte office, west of Orlando. He is to train volunteer teachers for the adult-education program

in Homestead, which has struggled; and programs in Plant City and Immokalee, which have been dormant.

Peñaflor is based at RCMA’s Mascotte office, west of Orlando. He is to train volunteer teachers for the adult-education program in Homestead, which has struggled; and programs in Plant City and Immokalee, which have been dormant. A musician, Peñaflor also will provide art instruction to preschool teachers and will demonstrate music, songs and games for the children.

The next 50 years

David Peñaflor teaches an adult class in Plant City.

O P E N I N G D O O R S T O O P P O R T U N I T I E S S I N C E 1 9 6 5

R E D L A N D S C H R I S T I A N M I G R A N T A S S O C I A T I O N W I N T E R N E W S 2 0 1 6

Redlands Christian Migrant Association402 West Main Street / Immokalee, Florida 34142(239) 658-3560 / www.rcma.org

NON-PROFIT ORGU.S. POSTAGE

P A I DPERMIT #1

LAKELAND FL

2 3 6Galarza heads advocacy group

5

Mainster honored

6

see THE NEXT 50 YEARS continued on page 4

Proceeds benefit RCMA

If RCMA is needed, it will endure`What if immigration from Mexico stopped?

`What if machines replaced strawberry pickers?

`What if they created child-care centers inside retirement homes?

`What if Congress shrank Head Start?

Such “what ifs” hover over RCMA as it heads into its 51st year, and there are no certain answers. A sampling of opinions from RCMA’s leaders produce a variety of thoughts, with two points of consensus:

“You will always have the poor among you.” And if that’s true, we will always have a need for RCMA.

In the face of ceaseless change, RCMA must remain flexible.

“RCMA has done a great job keeping up with change,” said Steve Price, a board member from Immokalee. ”But there’ll always be children with a need.”

The Latino waveSince 1965, RCMA has served low-income families

in rural Florida. That group has become dominated

These RCMA children in Fellsmere – like their RCMA counterparts statewide – are about four-fifths Latino and predominantly the children of immigrants. A slowdown in immigration could change that profile.

A big celebration for a big anniversaryORLANDO – RCMA celebrated its 50th birthday in October with a conference of 400 staff members in Orlando.

Speakers included top executives from the National Head Start Association, the Florida Office of Early

Learning and the National Migrant & Seasonal Head Start Association. The keynote speaker was Janet Murguia, executive director of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s leading advocacy group for Latinos.

“RCMA has not just provided important assistance to farm workers in helping care for their young children, but has made it a mission to help prepare this next generation for the rigors of college and an increasingly competitive job market,” Murguia said.

Four “RCMA babies,” young adults who attended RCMA as children, described how RCMA helped launch them into lives of success. They were: Anasol Roldan of Ruskin, an immigration attorney in Brandon; Charlie Brown of Avon Park, a student leader at the University of Florida; Ilda Martinez of Mulberry, a Gates Millennium Scholar at the University of South Florida; and Isiah Williams of Lake Placid, an academic advisor at Florida State University.

Throughout the two-day conference, professional-development workshops focused on topics such as teaching techniques, regulations by funding agencies, employment and immigration law and helping families.

Ivette Galarza, RCMA’s director of operations, snaps a photo of keynote speaker Janet Murguia (second from right) posing with Isabel Garcia (left), RCMA associate executive director, and Rebeca Millan, RCMA Head Start manager.

by Latino immigrants over the years, and RCMA has responded by assembling a staff that is 80 percent Latino.

Yet immigration is diminishing, at least in the near term. The great tide of immigrants that began in the 1970s included some 12 million Mexicans – and apparently ended with the Great Recession.

‘I felt good being there’At 38, Beatriz Coronado still remembers back to age 3, when she attended RCMA’s child-care center in Palmetto, south of Tampa Bay.

“What I remember is the nice atmosphere,” she said. “There was a lady who was always braiding my hair and just being so loving. It was just a place where I felt good being there … and I liked going.”

She was the daughter of tomato pickers and the granddaughter of a crew leader. Coronado helped on weekends. The family migrated to South Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

When Coronado was 15, she moved away from Palmetto, but not from RCMA. She and her husband settled in Homestead, where RCMA had been founded. Coronado had a daughter Then she began working part-time for RCMA while attending the South Dade Adult Center, studying for, and earning, her high-school diploma.

Soon, a top RCMA manager urged Coronado to try college.

“Really, that was all it took,” she recalled. “I liked school.”

Coronado gradually earned an associate’s degree at Miami-Dade College, and later moved on to a bachelor of applied science in supervision and management.

She progressed at RCMA too, helping to coordinate services for special-needs children. “I truly enjoyed making a difference in their lives,” she said. “That’s when I felt it was important to me to help children with disabilities.”

She became an RCMA health specialist. Two years ago, Coronado was promoted to area coordinator for RCMA in Florida City, at the southern tip of Miami-Dade County. Coronado supervises four child-care centers and about 100 staff members, caring for nearly 300 children.

School remains a place where Coronado likes to be.

“I’d like to get my master’s someday,” she said. “It would be in something related to what I’m doing now.”

Beatriz Coronado

A well-earned breakStudents at RCMA Leadership Academy relax after helping to build patios on their middle-school campus courtyard south of Tampa. The students measured the area, calculated the amount of sand and gravel needed and then laid the concrete pavers. The pavers, tables and other materials were purchased through a $5,000 grant from the PepsiCo Foundation Fund.

A F U N - R A I S E R A N D F U N D - R A I S E R

NAPLES – Even if you have never swung a club, you can contribute to the Lipman Golf Classic, RCMA’s largest annual fund-raiser.

The 17th annual golf tournament, scheduled for April 30 at Naples Heritage Golf & Country Club, is expected to attract up to 120 players. But its financial success relies on sponsors and door-prize donors.

Interested? You can support the tournament by:

• Buying a sponsorship ranging from $250 to $10,000. • Competing in the tournament for $225. • Donating a door prize.

For details, call RCMA’s Angie Alfaro at (239) 658-3560, or email her at angiea@rcma.org.

Whatever you choose will have impact. Proceeds of the golf tournament qualify RCMA for matching funds from the Florida Office of Early Learning, at a 16:1 rate!Strawberry event raises

$77,000 for RCMAPLANT CITY – A fund-raising event created by RCMA Board Member Gary Wishnatzki raised $77,000 for RCMA in February.

The third annual Bright House Networks Strawberry Picking Challenge on Feb. 6 featured 18 corporate-sponsored teams competing on a strawberry farm for the title of “Best Harvest Crew.”

The event was hosted by Wishnatzki’s Wish Farms, Florida’s largest grower and shipper of strawberries, and it showcased the local strawberry industry. Prior to creating the Strawberry Picking Challenge, Wishnatzki supported RCMA with an annual tennis tournament in Tampa.

A choir of third graders from RCMA’s Wimauma Academy opened the event by leading the Pledge of Allegiance and performing several songs.

Third graders from RCMA Wimauma Academy sing in February at the Bright House Networks Strawberry Picking Challenge, staged by Wish Farms in a strawberry farm in Plant City. The annual event raised $77,000 for RCMA.

RCMA invests in adult educationPLANT CITY – A veteran educator of Latino adults has joined RCMA to revive its adult learning centers outside Tampa and in Immokalee.

David Peñaflor is tasked with advancing one of RCMA’s core values: that competent child care includes improving the lives of the children’s parents. Low literacy plagues many of the farm-working families that RCMA serves.

One of Peñaflor’s chief assets is Plazas Comunitarias (Community Spaces), an adult-learning curriculum developed by the Mexican government, which blends written workbooks with online lessons. Working with Mexican consulates in Orlando and Miami, RCMA has used Plazas Comunitarias for years, but has struggled to adapt it to the unpredictable schedules of migrant farm workers.

Peñaflor worked for the Orlando consulate for six years, and has been involved in adult education for decades. He said he sympathizes strongly with people who missed school as children because of their families’ low incomes.

“It is very, very satisfying to me when adults take the next steps through the program,” he said.

Peñaflor is based at RCMA’s Mascotte office, west of Orlando. He is to train volunteer teachers for the adult-education program

in Homestead, which has struggled; and programs in Plant City and Immokalee, which have been dormant.

Peñaflor is based at RCMA’s Mascotte office, west of Orlando. He is to train volunteer teachers for the adult-education program in Homestead, which has struggled; and programs in Plant City and Immokalee, which have been dormant. A musician, Peñaflor also will provide art instruction to preschool teachers and will demonstrate music, songs and games for the children.

The next 50 years

David Peñaflor teaches an adult class in Plant City.