Based in San Marcos, the Núñez sisters’ program leads the community through education
A pair of trailblazers named Arcela and Maria Nuñez are helping the immigrant community in North San Diego County face one of its greatest challenges.
Parents and grandparents of this community, “through no fault of their own, were denied a formal education because of their situation in life,” says Arcela, who, with her sister Maria, founded Universidad Popular, a nonprofit that highlights education for everyone.
The Núñez sisters are part of a family of immigrants from the Mexican state of Michoacán who came to this country seeking better opportunities, which they now pass on to others. “The ‘People’s University, as it would be in English, was … born out of the movement to promote the right to education for all,” says Arcela Núñez, who is also the former Director of the Latino Research Center at Cal State San Marcos. Today, with their team, the sisters focus on promoting health, education, and culture, and fostering civic engagement while creating a community education model and a bilingual space for the whole family. “Everyone has the ability to learn,” says Arcela.
Education
The focal point of Universidad Popular is education. “Learning and education is a life-long process,” says Arcela Nuñez. With a focus on Latin American History and Chicano/Chicana Studies, she says that teaching is the baseline for community-empowerment work. Universidad Popular launched history, civic participation, leadership development, and cultural promotion efforts in 2012.
The goal is to “nurture leadership to build political power, get young people to participate and understand politics. And cultivate wisdom through elders,” says Arcela. “In the North County there are so many community members who have a lot to share because of their lived experiences, so we began to open our classrooms for adults,” she says. Students began to invite their parents and grandparents. “I can’t learn anything. I never went to school…,” they said. Then, “their minds began to open up …. They took their role as students very seriously,” says Arcela. She explains the goal of building an extended-family atmosphere. “The classroom became a multi-generational space, where you are able to learn from the adults, and the adults are able to share…” Education is one piece in the strategy. “The other part of the work is civic participation,” says Arcela.
Civic Engagement
When María Núñez was nominated for the San Marcos City Council (District 1), she not only won; she broke all voting records. María is the first Latina representative on the Council. Arcela credits grassroots efforts, including Universidad Popular’s Citizenship Classes. The organization boasts more than 1,000 citizenship applications, almost a 100% success rate. Besides teaching applicants how to respond to questions and providing language services at the site of the exam, Universidad Popular provides connections to immigration lawyers. Arcela says the road to citizenship is life changing. “They come out in a whole new person … Citizenship is part of a psychological, emotional, political, economic empowerment process.”
For the Núñez sisters, the next step is “hands on engagement in the political and civic process. You are a citizen. You need to learn how to vote,” Arcela tells people. Her program helps new citizens read ballots and vote for the first time, providing “political power for Latinos and immigrants in our community.” It includes one-on-one-tutoring and interview strategies. Some students have become elected officials, like her sister. Now the representative of a 90% Latino district, María Núñez first had to mobilize, to knock on doors and talk to neighbors about elections. “We’ve never met any candidates. Nobody’s ever cared to ask us what we think,” many neighbors told them. The mobilization efforts worked. From 14% participation, the district went to 67% for Maria’s election. Arcela says it is not a matter of playing politics. María is non-party affiliated. It’s about “providing a path so that our community learns, is educated, and can make decisions…” she says.
Health
To face the Covid-19 pandemic, Universidad Popular joined up with vaccination campaigns. A team led by the Nuñez sisters “connected people to resources, to worker rights information, to fill out applications for employment relief,” says Arcela. The immigrant community was the hardest hit by Covid,” she says. “Covid has shown how big the gap is in health access. Inequities in health access impact everything.”
To meet the challenge, the organization still provides vaccines at some elementary schools in San Marcos, and in Escondido it sets up in the parking lot at the HHSA Center every Sunday. The program averages 90 vaccines a day, the highest turnout in San Diego County. The Núñez sisters are the perfect example of how people from the immigrant community can use their own tools to empower others. “Universidad Popular is a model of community education that has deep roots in Latin America, so we wanted to continue and kind of bring that tradition into San Diego County and offer classes in our own community,” says Arcela.
Universidad Popular Co-Director: Lilian Serrano, Angelica Santiago, Ana M. Ardon, and Flower Alvarez-Lopez
– Yenni Patino, Editor, North County Informador
