Happy Birthday MECA: A DISPATCH FROM HOUSTON By Maribel Alvarez
Frances Valdez (Dow School Restoration Project Director), Alice Valdez (Ex. Director & Founder), Liz Salinas (Program Director), and Lizeth Gonzalez (Registrar and Assistant to Program Director.
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of trust, support, celebration, and pride and yet, at the same time, issues a stern call for discipline, accountability, and excellence.
jump onto the passenger seat of the MECAmobile — a road-weary black Chevy mini truck hand-painted with bright calacas, marigolds, and papel picado motifs. Impromptu lettering prominently displayed on the side doors announces the upcoming Day of the Dead festivities. It would be tempting to dismiss the truck as one of those “outsider art” eccentricities. But this truck is different; its serves a larger purpose on the service of a larger cause. I am talking about MECA — Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts — the 30-year old stalwart of arts education for Houston’s Latino community. On this day, the truck is imbued with extraordinary powers: at the wheel, graciously driving me to dinner is the person who functions as both the heart and central nervous system of this organization. I am fortunate in ways that are difficult to pinpoint with exactitude: this balmy evening, my chauffer is MECA’s founder and Executive Director Alice Valdez. For 30 years, without skipping a beat, Alice Valdez and MECA have shared a common passion: the healthy social, cultural, and academic development of Houston’s at-risk, inner city youth through education in the arts. But if thirty years sounds like a long time (and it is), leading the casual observer to assume that after a while both founder and organization would grow tired and all-too-predictable to each other, upon first having any contact with MECA one quickly learns to do away with those clichéd assumptions.
The story of MECA is in large part the story of a holistic approach to human development. The organization’s philosophy for arts programming is not naïve about the difficulties encountered by poor and immigrant families and youth in the inner-city. But instead of remaining in the confines of a deficit model, MECA sees in these same families and children tremendous assets that can be activated.
“It’s not just about teaching the art forms in a vacuum,” says Alice as we drive, “it’s also about passing on values, love, and support --- some kids don’t even have that at home, so we become their home in the community.” Continued on page 13.
el AVISO Summer 2008 |
Instead of exhaustion, a heightened sense of urgency, can-do resourcefulness, impeccable work ethic, and a relentless “gusto por la vida” are palpable throughout the organization. This is obvious as soon as one walks through the door of the historic Dow Elementary School building that MECA calls home since 1993. Currently undergoing massive upgrade and rehabilitation, the facility is in a way emblematic of MECA’s unique combination of strengths: a place of social memory and comfort that engenders feelings
Focused specifically on serving youth and families in Houston’s 6th Ward, 1st Ward, and the neighborhoods of Near Northside and Heights, MECA began as an outgrowth of a community folk festival sponsored by the local Catholic church in 1977. The core mission of the organization is music education rounded up by academic and family services. Students receive tutoring, mentoring, life-skills workshops, SAT prep, college assistance and scholarships. In addition, they are exposed to a broad range of social experiences in the community, including an award-winning job training program in architecture and construction in tandem with the building’s renovation. Through a threetier arts education program that includes music and visual art teachers placed in approximately twenty one Houston area schools; after-school year-round classes for close to 200 young people; and a seven-week summer arts camp, altogether more than 2,000 students received sustained academic and cultural enrichment instruction throughout the year. In addition to the arts education emphasis, MECA also presents a performance season and commissions new works in collaboration with local, regional, national, and international artists.
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