Celebrating Latine Heritage Month with LPA: The Determination to Succeed
Areli Estrada grew up in extreme poverty in South Central LA before moving to Wisconsin and earning a master’s degree at UW-Green Bay.
by Jonathan Gramling
There is poor growing up as a child where the family may live in a food desert or depend on free meal programs and food pantries in order to survive. And then there is dirt poor where even the basic necessities to live and yet the children still survive and achieve wonderful things in their lives.
Areli Estrada, who until recently was the director of Affordable Dental Care, grew up dirt poor in El Roblito in Nayarit, Mexico.
“It was a very poor village with no running water or electricity,” Erstrada said. So there is so much meaning and value to the name of my consulting business because I named it after the village where I lived up until the age of seven, Roble for Community Development.”
The family moved to South Central LA. It may have been a step up from El Roblito, but the family still lived in extreme poverty.
“We moved into a storage unit where we lived for a couple of years,” Estrada said. “Everything was donated to us, from shoes to clothes. My dad’s first job was selling corn on the cob for one dollar. And I would go and help him sell the corn.”
The good news was that Estrada had a decent school that she attended.
“I didn’t speak any English,” Estrada said. “I got enrolled into third grade. And all my teachers spoke Spanish. They were bilingual. So I grew up in a very diverse environment with Brown and Black people mixed together. We were all a community, a family. I grew up being all of that. So it blows my mind here in Wisconsin how we spend a lot of time in this whole DEI concept. I’m not diminishing that. It’s necessary. But it wasn’t something that I
grew up with.
It wasn’t a topic for discussion because that was just the nature of being there. It was just a blend of different languages, different cultures and all kinds of people. I grew up seeing all of that. But also, it was very normal.
The bad news was that Estrada’s neighborhood was plagued by violence.
“I grew up in the hood where we saw gun violence,” Estrada said. “I didn’t see anything wrong with it. It was just a way of life, part of the environment. That is what it is like to live in the hood. I was right in the epicenter in South Central LA. There were shootings across the street from our high school. And then there was a lock down where they weren’t letting us go. My big brother got shot. He spent many months in the hospital.”
Estrada’s parents had had enough. To protect the sons, the family moved to Manitowoc.
“My mom already had a relative there,” Estrada said. “They came and visited. They liked it and they moved. They wanted to remove their children from that environment.”
While she didn’t want to move to Wisconsin, she relented. She was 20-years-old and in order to qualify for in-state tuition, Estrada worked for a year.
“I started working factory jobs,” Estrada said. “Eventually I got my bachelor’s degree from UW-Green Bay. And then I worked for a chamber of commerce with a workforce development initiative. I ended up working in a k-8 school. I started getting really involved with community engagement and community outreach. I volunteered at a Hispanic resource center. And that’s where I got very involved with community engagement. I saw the need of really serving people with fewer resources or access to resources and services. And so I started volunteering for an immigration attorney, translating and I started learning a lot about the Hispanic and Latino communities in Wisconsin and the lack of services and resources. I really saw the need of empowering and elevating their voices. I started seeing myself more as a bridge.”
Estrada worked in Manitowoc for eight years and then Green Bay for three before accepting a job at Madison College at Truax.
“I ended up working with the adult basic education program at Madison College,” Estrada said. “I stayed there for three years. And then I went back to school to get my master’s degree in community development. And then after graduate school, I became the executive director of Affordable Dental Care.”
Estrada looked at Affordable Dental Care as a development project. It’s capacity was far outstripped by its resources.
“When I started, we started with a budget of $640,000,” Estrada said. “And I increased it to over $1 million, $1.2 million. I secured funding. I focused on the financial sustainability of the mission. I conducted strategic planning. I took the clinic to where it needed to be to continue to expand on the mission of delivering high-quality services to people who have zero chances of accessing care through governmental programming. It was really focused on the population of the under and uninsured, people with very limited access to any resources.”
And then Estrada led a capital campaign to build a newer, larger clinic in the shopping center grounds at the complex at Sherman Avenue and Aberg Blvd.
“For that clinic, the construction schedule has been finalized,” Estrada said. “They are looking to open sometime in November.”
Estrada started Robles for Community Development as a vehicle to help organizations of color to secure local, county and state funding. She will be the bridge beteen the entities. She feels that there is a disconnect between what the organizations are able to secure and what they need to complete their missions.
“One of the clients I am working with is Amigos Construction with Wensy Melendez,” Estrada said. “I get to lobby for his business to secure contracts in the construction realm. He’s like the perfect client for me, to secure contracts for him. He’s a minority-owned construction company. We have to ensure that the funding has been funneled.”
While she admits she is nervous striking out on her own and leaving a secure position, it is something that her passion led her to do.
“I am very excited,” Estrada said. “It’s just very exciting and it makes me very happy for having the autonomy, the relationship-building component, engaging with individuals, and being the voice of my clients. It makes me nervous. But it’s like a good feeling. It gives me a lot of purpose, not to say that I didn’t have purpose before. But I think that my experience over the last three years really prepared me to take this next step.”
Areli Estrada would have regretted for the rest of her life if she didn’t follow her passion. While there is much to risk, there is much to gain for Estrada and for the community.