Celebrate CIELO, which has spent 25 years partnering with Latinos to improve lives
In 1996, eight Latinas founded a nonprofit called CIELO (Centro Integral Educativo Latino de Olympia) to help Latinos in South Sound access mental health services. They also organized a sewing class, which brought together Latinas to learn a marketable skill, practice their English, and spend time together. Today that class is still held, and still taught by Rosalva Darin, its founding teacher.
Those eight Latinas really started something: Today CIELO offers online adult education classes, courses for new or aspiring business owners, computer classes, a homework club for students, an education-focused summer camp, parent workshops, and advocacy for families that need help navigating the school system.
There is assistance for victims of domestic violence and other crimes who would not have access to the criminal justice system without CIELO’s help. There are family support and mental health services, a food bank, and emergency services.
There is advice on how to deal with the U.S. immigration system, and if you’ve ever been curious about the test immigrants must pass to become citizens, you can find it — along with flashcards to study for it — on CIELO’s website.
In the past 18 months, there also have been vaccination events.
Growing and sustaining all these programs and partnerships was hard work. The pandemic made it harder. When CIELO’s headquarters in the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd had to be closed, participation dropped like a rock.
“Crimes and emergencies didn’t stop,” says executive director Julio Rios, “they just went silent. There was a lot of anxiety, depression and isolation.”
CIELO rallied by working overtime to get families connected to the internet, to help parents and students learn online, and to make creative use of social media via cell phones. When their Shelton facility had to close, CIELO staff found unused library rooms for meetings with crime victims. They established tele-health mental health services.
“These services are monumental for families who are hesitant to get help,” Rios says. By mid-year, thanks to WhatsApp, e-fliers and phones, 75 people participated in an online session titled “Characteristics of a Healthy Family.”
Rios says, “Our staff were education heroes. By December 2020, our numbers were 150 percent above pre-pandemic levels.”
Rios, who recently completed his first year as executive director, is a first-generation immigrant, and the husband of a woman from Washington. They spent the first 15 years of their marriage in Mexico, where Rios was a manufacturing engineer for General Motors before a career switch to working for nonprofits that served young people. The couple moved to Washington in 2019 with their children.
His approach to organizational management is both innovative and humble.
“We are not the saviors of our community,” he says, “we are sojourners with them. When you create a network of decision makers, you not only bring down hierarchies, you expand the power of all the minds of people to whom you are providing services.
“When you have crucial conversations — what are your needs, what’s difficult for you, what will be a pathway for better relationships with the community in which you live — you begin to create services that provoke systemic change. You begin to create a community of equity.”
The next challenge for CIELO is to find a bigger and more permanent location. Rios says it’s “not just about real estate, it’s about the sounds and aromas of home. We need to find a place where people can say ‘I know I’m far away, but this is home; this is where people understand me and love me.’” That means it will need not just classrooms, but also a big kitchen, and room for children to run and play.
At 7 p.m. Oct. 16, CIELO will celebrate its 25th anniversary with an online event. Thurston Community Media will livestream it on its website and broadcast it on channel 77. It also will be on YouTube.
This story was originally published October 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM.