A fundraising dinner in December for Kent’s Lucy Lopez Center raised nearly $3,000 – something for which Roberto Gonzales, a cofounder of the center, is thankful.
“It went wonderful,” said Gonzales, seated last month in a booth at his Mexico Lindo restaurant in Kent, and recalling the Dec. 5 Mexican festivities at the Kent Senior Activity Center. “We had about 100 people.”
But while the assistance is appreciated, it underscores what has become a harsh reality for the nonprofit center.
It paid to keep the facility operating for just one month.
“Right now we are flat,” Gonzales said, noting that while funds are short, the Lopez Center continues to fill an ongoing need, especially among the region’s Hispanic community. The center, which operates from a converted home along Washington Avenue, offers language classes, computer education, immigration advice and naturalization coursework, all at free or low cost to some of the region’s neediest residents.
Gonzales, who earlier made a nearly $70,000 loan from his business to keep the Lopez Center operating, said he is looking for anyone with good ideas to help him and the center’s board of directors find ways to keep the lights burning and the help to the community coming. With the mortgage payment and utilities, it costs about $3,000 per month to keep the center in operation.
Gonzales said they are doing what they can with their limited resources, even ending their executive director’s paid position and replacing it with a volunteer post, manned by Raul Ramos, the center’s other cofounder, with input from the center’s board of directors.
Closing the center, which opened to much fanfare two years ago, is an option that Gonzales doesn’t want to see become reality.
“Right now, it’s so hard, so difficult, to go back and say we’re going to close, because we put so much effort into this,” Gonzales said.
Speaking Tuesday, Ramos said the center board is determined to make a go of it, because they are providing a much-needed service to the community, and people need their help..
“We are determined to remain,” he said. “We helped over 1,000 people last year.”
And there is the issue of how vested the Lucy Lopez Center already is, on the financial level as well as the social level.
“We have a sizeable equity in the property – over $700,000,” Ramos said, of the home and property which the organization was able to purchase, with state financial assistance. “There’s no way we’re going to allow ourselves to lose that property.”
But Ramos noted that with the number of other social-service organizations on the radar, the Lucy Lopez Center may be hard-pressed to seek out local grant sources.
“I don’t think we’re going to compete with them very well,” Ramos said. “All of them have needs, all of them have shown a lot of accomplishments.”
But with the modest budget they need to operate – about $36,000 a year – Ramos said he is hoping a business interest out there might be willing to help fund them.
Perhaps a business that stands to benefit from the services the center provides: helping Latinos find their way in the community as productive, informed citizens.
“Our big thing is citizenship,” Ramos said. “We want our hispanic population to participate in the community.”
To learn more about the Lucy Lopez Center, go online to www.lucylopez.org.
To contact Ramos about possible funding ideas, send an e-mail to raul.ramos@lucylopez.org.
The center is open noon to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
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