La Casa welcomes more visitors at its bigger home, and from further away

Hours before dozens of school-aged children would fill the afternoon youth programs at La Casa de Amistad, a sort of Christmas story unfolded. In the biblical sense, it harkened back to two lonely parents, Joseph and Mary, who traveled in search of a meager place to stay for the night.

A woman stepped into the nonprofit agency to ask for help dealing with her partner’s wall-punching outburst in front of her children.

She could have gone straight to the YWCA shelter. Or to the Family Justice Center’s supportive services. Perhaps she didn’t know about these domestic violence resources. But the request early this month triggered a quick, natural response for staff at La Casa, which will mark 50 years on Oct. 17, 2023, having come from humble beginnings as a youth and family center.

Staff translated and helped the Spanish-speaking woman through the Family Justice Center’s victim intake.

“It’s happened more than once,” La Casa Executive Director Juan Constantino explained. “La Casa de Amistad is a trusted place for the community to come.”

La Casa’s year-round sense of welcome has blossomed since, in June 2021, it moved into its new, high-profile quarters at 3423 S. Michigan St., more than five times the space of its prior, cramped home on Meade Street.

Color-coded spacious hallways lead to rooms with flexible uses. Some are named for well-known local sponsors, which speaks to the range of support, donated furniture and volunteer labor that it took to finish the $3.25 million acquisition and renovation of this former furniture store and charter school.

September 2020:La Casa carves larger new South Bend home and programs in spite of COVID-19

Artwork livens the walls, including pre-Colombian pieces on permanent loan from the University of Notre Dame and La Casa youths’ paintings that interpret their families’ immigration stories.

"They do feel at home there,” the Rev. Ryan Pietrocarlo, said of his many Spanish-speaking parishioners from St. Adalbert and St. Casimir parishes who travel four miles beyond the old site to continue participating in programs and even working at La Casa. “It’s a place of safety and peace and welcome.”

Constantino said it’s also bringing in more people. He estimates that the Meade site, an old neighborhood storefront with only on-street parking, would get 6,000 calls and visits per year. But since moving to Michigan Street — along a bus line and a flood of car traffic — he said it now fields about 2,500 phone calls in one month alone, plus another 2,000 people walking through the door.

Staff numbers have nearly doubled to about 20, mostly full time.

Becoming citizens

The adults who come for citizenship classes pass an office wall that’s covered with a large wooden map of the world. Students have hailed from more than 80 countries over the past 15 years that La Casa has offered the class. So far, Constantino said, with a 100% pass rate, about 1,000 of them have gone on to complete the test and become naturalized citizens.

For the first five years, they studied in the old St. Casimir school, then moved to the Marycrest Building on Western Avenue.

Now, they and everyone in La Casa’s programs enter doors embedded in a mural, dedicated on Dec. 12, where a South Bend artist turned citizenship class stories into a painting that honors the difficulties and hopes of their immigration journeys.

Dec. 12, 2022:Immigrant tales take flight in La Casa mural

“This is a place where people want to be,” Nanci Flores, director of citizenship and immigration services, said. “It’s not dark and dingy. … We’re also finding that, even though we are not in the heart of the west side, the west side has come and feels welcome here. Time and again, students say, ‘We feel welcome.’”

She said students have been coming from as far out as LaPorte, Stevensville, Berrien Springs, Ligonier, Plymouth, Walkerton, Goshen and Plymouth, now with roughly 65 students split into three classes, one of them in Spanish. La Casa offers a satellite class in Warsaw, too.

Access is easier here than at the Marycrest, she said, thanks to the bus line and the exit from the U.S. 20 bypass just one mile away.

She had one student tune in via Zoom from Indianapolis. The virtual option, which started in the pandemic and is still available, has enabled students to keep up with the class while on vacation in Mexico or, for one truck driver, to tune in from stops along the road.

Aside from La Casa, the nearest citizenship classes are in Lake County, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis.

Wider reach

La Casa has always focused on the Latinx community, though not exclusively, but now a greater spread of cultures is arriving.

There’s an Arabic-speaking advisor in its immigration legal clinic. And Afghan refugees started visiting La Casa a year ago for clothes, food, toys, care packages and legal help as the agency pitched in with the United Religious Community's and Catholic Charities’ efforts to settle more than 60 of the refugees in St. Joseph County.

La Casa’s mission statement hasn’t changed so far, Constantino said, adding, “Our values are the same: to empower and support our community.”

Youth still come to La Casa primarily from South Bend, but Constantino said its other social services are now drawing from all of the surrounding counties, even a few from Lake and Porter counties. Compared with its tucked-away presence on Meade, he said, there’s also more drive-by interest from motorists on Michigan who stop to see what La Casa is about.

He welcomed the chance this year to be part of Beacon Health System’s ad campaign about taking COVID-19 precautions, hoping to reach Latinx folks. His whole family was infected before the vaccines had come out, and his stepfather had been in shaky condition for two weeks, remaining at home.

He said his parents were relieved that they didn't need a hospital visit since, as undocumented people, they lacked health insurance. Constantino, 29, who became La Casa’s director in September 2021 after being on staff since 2016, has been open about his status as a DACA recipient, which the federal government grants to allow children of undocumented immigrants to study and work.

September 2021:La Casa de Amistad in South Bend names one of its own as new executive director

Some people have merely seen him on a Beacon billboard and asked about it.

“All of a sudden, you’re talking about vaccinations again," he said. “That opens an opportunity.”

More room for youths

La Casa hasn’t added any new programs of its own, though it hopes to eventually, Constantino said. Rather, more outside programs are filling spaces in ways that weren’t possible at the old site, such as open houses with community health workers, COVID vaccination clinics and entrepreneur workshops.

“Before, we didn’t know how to say yes to more interns because I didn’t know where they’d sit,” he said.

At Meade, kids in after-school programs had snacks and did art, tutoring and almost all of their activities at the same table in either the upstairs, which could hold up to 35 elementary school students, or in the basement for up to 20 high school kids.

Now, they first report to the Empowerment Center, equipped with a kitchen and used for an array of meetings and movies, where they start with a snack and sort of a homeroom. Then they split into one of five tutoring rooms with ample space.

Youths often stop by a library where bookshelves are stocked with a rotating collection of books each month by the St. Joseph County Public Library. Each youth must spend at least 20 minutes of their daily visit reading.

They also may visit the technology lab, with three times the number of computers as the outdated models at Meade. When The Tribune visited, adults in the English class, once hosted at Marycrest, were taking tests on the computers.

Some youths may go to the art room. As she prepared slime, high school coordinator Gabi Morgan said each week’s art ties into a given cultural theme. On hallway walls, there are cloths that youths painted in summer camp, telling stories of monarch butterflies, which are beloved in Mexican culture and whose annual 3,000-mile flight is a metaphor for immigration.

In the lower level, the bilingual preschool Yo Puedo Leer (I Can Read) boasts three times the space as before. But, unlike other programs here, Constantino said, it hasn’t managed to grow beyond about 20 students in all, even though it has room for two sessions, each with 24 kids.

The challenge, Constantino said, is that it’s competing with many other local preschools that can offer full-day sessions, which is good for working parents. La Casa offers only half-day classes because it lacks the license required for full days, though he said it’s working on getting a license.

That’s despite a lot of excitement about the improved preschool space that the Rev. Pietrocarlo had initially heard from his parishioners at St. Adalbert and St. Casimir.

“There’s a big need for child care,” he said. “That’s a place they feel comfortable with.”

At La Casa, the pastor said, “They feel cared for and form relationships there.”

Also finished

∎ Zocalo: A large open room with a stage downstairs was finished just a couple of months ago with new floors, lighting, acoustic panels and Bluetooth system. Known as the Zocalo (public square), it has already held La Casa’s annual gala, a youth and family potluck celebration, a Christmas market and Zumba dances. Kids have ridden trikes here on cold days.

∎ Solar: On the roof, a new 106 kilowatt-hour solar system with roughly 200 panels has just been hooked up, poised to generate all of the building’s electricity needs. Heat still comes from natural gas. The $405,000 project, including a new roof, has all been paid for through donations and South Bend’s Energy Assistance and Solar Savings Initiative.

Yet to come

∎ Outdoor playground: Could be built by summer 2023, now with 60% of its funding.

∎ Music practice, a family nursery room, etc.: Could fill four vacant rooms downstairs as funding arrives.

∎ Former café: Unused on the main floor, La Casa hopes for an outside partner to lease it.

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: La Casa de Amistad sees more immigrants, Latinx youths in new home