San Ysidro Community Leader Reflects On 35 Years Of Advocacy

This is KPBS Midday Edition. On Maureen Cavanaugh. One of the most satisfying achievements after a long career is the feeling that your work has made a difference. The work of Andreas the reaper at Cassa familiar has made a big difference and she retires as 35 years as president and CEO of the nonprofit community organization. She leaves a more organized engaged and thriving community behind. It is a pleasure to measure -- in introduce my guess Andreas Serepa . you are a longtime resident. How has fantasy draft change from the area you knew growing up . okay. Well I spent the night before I was born in sin list Cedro and I spent the weeks after in those days they kept the mothers in the hospital for a week so at one week I went back to San those Cedro. It was a small town. It had about 2000 residents in it and now there are about 35,000s. What I understood was that there was a certain sense that there was not a lot of opportunity. Not a lot of political responsiveness to that area and that is sort of what you wanted to bring to the area when you came back as an adult and started in advocacy program . that's right. I graduated from San Diego State. I got my certification as a teacher because I do believe that education is our key. However, education is so slow. It is like turning the Queen Mary in a creek. And I have been trained as an organizer so I needed more immediate feedback so I stayed there for 10 years and started the union and did collective-bargaining and got fired and then hired and then this opening came up at Cassa familiar and then I said what better thing could I do and I have been working with the kids and I thought maybe if I worked with the adults we can make it go further and more profoundly so that is what I did and if somebody did not know what Casa Familia was or what it did, how would you describe it to somebody talk It is a community development organization that uses its services to touch people were they have a need but in return we know that they cannot pay money and we know that so we engage them in the community. And how many different ways to engage them transparent but we have about 50 different programs and we had community convenience that from 50 to 250 people that attend than every other month and we talk to them about issues that are bigger than their Medi-Cal application. We are doing the second air quality control research that has ever been done on the border if you can believe that and so now we have gotten the residents involved in picking out where they take it should be monitored. We engage our people to do those kinds of things and to raise the quality of their life to have pride, and to demand the decision-makers to treat us with equality and justice. Because it is -- Casa Familia is such a broad range of services and programs did you encounter any resistance when you first started talk Yes. You can't even imagine. Not from the residence because they understood what we were trying to do, but from the decision-makers. It is nice to have a place where you can dump all of the stuff that you don't want any other districts. The district representative was never from the area so they did not really care either so yes -- and I had to get very direct and made a lot of enemies in those times . so as you leave Casa Familia how would you like to see that organization grow testing that when I got there there was zero assets. We did not even own a chair. We now have over $14 million in assets so I would like to see that continue to grow. The example I always give is this -- when we first started it was easy for us to get 250 people ready to come down and burn down City Hall. What was hard was getting money to rent the buses to come down so I don't ever want us to get into the place where we have a burning issue and it is hard for us to raise the 250 people. Would you like to see Casa Familia be self-sufficient? We are to 63% which is an amazing number that we have made investments in properties and all that kind of stuff which we put the money for our other programs because no matter where you get the money it will eventually stop. I have never found one -- even the city doesn't give out money anymore so we are at 63%. I would like it to be at 100% and the money that we get from grants and city funding and state funding would be like the cherry on top . now the new head of Casa Familia is Lisa Costas . what are your plans for your retirement talk your body gets older your mind -- if you keep it kind of sharp it stays sharp so I am very interested. I am on the ACLU board. I am interested in getting the Constitution closer to the people so they understand what their rights are and how even though they hear a lot of political rhetoric especially now how you just cannot do -- you just cannot pickup people and shut them out the door. And I would like to may be study something, maybe development or something like that where I could help the agency with those kind of things . I have been speaking with Andrea Serepa retiring as the head of Casa Familia in San Los Cerdo Andrea, thank you very much.