Holy Cross Ministries wins Select Health 25 award

Intermountain Catholic

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From left, promotoras Esperanza Arias, Lourdes Avila, Teresa Gonzalez, Maribel Real and Raquel Cano pose with the Holy Cross Ministries banner at the Select Health 25 luncheon. IC photo/Marie Mischel

SALT LAKE CITY — Competing against more than 300 organizations statewide, Holy Cross Ministries’ promotora program was among those chosen for the annual Select 25 Awards Program, presented May 1 this year at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City.

The Select 25 award was created by Select Health in 2008 to honor those who promote a healthy community. Award recipients receive $2,500.

This year’s 25 winners ranged from the Brigham City Senior Center Pickleball program, which promotes exercise for seniors; to the Dixie State College Dental Hygiene Outreach Program, which visits locations such as low-income elementary schools, rehabilitation centers and Head Start preschools.

Special recognition was given this year to the Boys & Girls Club for its work with children.

The five promotoras at Holy Cross Ministries are bilingual and bicultural outreach workers who connect their clients to resources such as food, clothing and a primary care physician. Most of the clients are Spanish-speaking women of childbearing age; many of them are pregnant or have young children.

The promotoras also teach basic pre-natal classes in Spanish. The 34 topics covered in the classes include early childhood literacy and domestic violence issues.

Support groups for parents with special needs children and survivors of domestic violence are offered as well.

In addition, the promotoras, who operate out of clinics in Salt Lake and Summit counties, help with a myriad of problems faced by Spanish-speaking people trying to navigate American culture.

"It’s just an open-door policy, and really there probably isn’t anything that hasn’t walked through the door," said Maribel Real, Holy Cross Ministries outreach coordinator. "The promotora establishes an incredible rapport with the client so that when the client is in crisis, that’s the first person that they think about."

In all, the promotoras serve about 300 people a month. They meet twice a month for in-service training offered by the agencies that they collaborate with, Real said.

"It’s important to say that the promotoras don’t even really look at this as a job, it’s more of a vocation," she said.

Esperanza Arias, who has been a promotora since 1999, agreed.

"This program is part of my life," Arias said, adding that, because the community has so many needs, people ask her for help when they see her at church or in the supermarket.

Now, after so many years, she sees the children being successful in school. She also finds the support group for children with special needs very satisfying, she said, because "they open their hearts to each other."

About 150 families are signed up for that group; about 15 families attend regularly, Real said.

The promotora program works closely with Holy Cross Ministries’ legal immigration program, which received one of this year’s Crime Victim Service Awards from the Utah Council on Victims of Crime.

Holy Cross Sister Kathleen Moroney established the immigration program at Holy Cross Ministries in 2000.

"It’s a place where the Church needs to be," Sr. Kathleen said. "Why? Because the Church is supposed to be on the side of the underserved and the disadvantaged.... Holy Cross Ministries was founded to meet the unmet needs of the most vulnerable in this area, and ... certainly immigration has been a great need. There is a whole batch of people who do qualify for immigration benefits under the laws that have been approved by our government, so what we’re doing is helping those people, and what we do is work only with the poor."

Over the years, the program has grown and now offers help for immigrants who are victims of violent crimes, especially domestic violence. They typically see 30 clients a month; in 2012 they did 400 consultations total, Sr. Kathleen said.

"It’s been a very successful program... [but] it’s hard because there’s a big demand for our services in the domestic violence area," she said.