Nuestra Alianza
Practical Support and Community Solidarity for Local Latinos
by Torrey Douglass
Sergio Perez came to the U.S. not long before his 13th birthday in 2003. He spoke no English, and the class at the public school designed to help him learn had only one teacher providing assistance for all the Latino students struggling academically. Only Sergio and one other new arrival spoke no English whatsoever, but with so many other students needing help in English, they didn’t get a lot of attention.
Fortunately, a new nonprofit in Willits called Nuestra Alianza de Willits—Our Alliance of Willits—was launching its first project, a free summer program for Spanish-speaking children ages 6 to 12. Plan Vacacional instructed children and their parents about Mexican language, culture, art, and sports. It was taught in Spanish, and provided 40 minutes a day of academic support from a credentialed teacher. With this help, in addition to the English as a Second Language (ESL) classes also offered by Nuestra Alianza, Sergio was able to learn English, make friends, and start to feel at home in the United States.
The concept for Nuestra Alianza de Willits (NAW) was born in 2000, when ESL instructor Dina Hutton was teaching a Mendocino College class at the Willits campus. The students, primarily Spanish-speaking immigrant adults, were conversing after class one night, discussing the services their kids needed, including a summer program and after-school help with homework. “Nobody is going to do that for you,” Dina observed. “You have to do that yourselves. I think we can do it with a nonprofit.”
Of the 16 people who started NAW, only one—Dina—spoke English, and none of them had experience with starting and managing a nonprofit. But they knew what they wanted to provide, and step-by-step figured out how to get it done. Three years later in the summer of 2003, the first program, Plan Vacacional, provided summer fun and instruction for 40 students and their parents. Twenty-two years later, the program continues, sometimes able to host a teacher from Mexico, and always ending with a ballet folklórico performance and celebration dinner for as many as 250 people.
Plan Vacacional is just one of the 14 programs NAW provides. They also offer free tax preparation during tax season, where volunteers help anyone who needs assistance to file their personal taxes. In 2024 they helped 450 people—60% were Latinos, 10% were Native Americans, and 30% were other locals. With this free service, clients can access their tax refund, providing much-needed additional income for them and their families.
The organization has also partnered with the Willits public school system, arranging for bilingual helpers to be in the classroom for homework support during Kids Club, the after school program. According to the former superintendent, it used to take six years for new English speakers to get up to grade level. With the bilingual aides NAW provided, it took just two. The program was dropped during the pandemic and has yet to be reactivated.
Helping immigrant workers—documented or not— understand their rights is another aspect of NAW’s work. They bring lawyers from around the region, including Sacramento, Santa Rosa, and San Francisco, to speak and answer questions. Sometimes NAW staff and volunteers go out into the fields to talk to workers, bringing food and potentially life-saving information, like how they are entitled to drink water and take breaks in the shade.
One of the most in-demand programs right now is the Emergency Food Bank, created during the COVID pandemic after the Willits Food Bank noticed Latinos were not accessing their services. NAW investigated, discovering that a combination of pride, shyness, and reluctance to complete the required paperwork discouraged local immigrants from showing up. So NAW started their emergency food bank, open Monday through Friday from 9:30am to 4:30pm, where anyone can stop by up to once a week to get food if they have an emergency. People are asked about their family size and income, but no paperwork is required. The bank helps 62 families every month, getting food donations from both the larger Willits Food Bank and the Redwood Empire Food Bank. Originally all food donations were free, but recently the unfunded Emergency Food Bank has been asked to pay for any donations of proteins like canned fish, meats, and eggs.
Twenty-four years after its inception, Nuestra Alianza is still going strong. Programs include free bilingual mental health services; classes and presentations around health and parenting, sometimes in collaboration with other organizations; immigration and translation support; referrals for social services; math tutoring in both English and Spanish; help accessing substance abuse counseling; and even just access to an internet-connected computer and copy machine for general use. Dina shares, “A lot of county workers have said to me, ‘We’re so glad you are working with the Latinos. We hope you can talk them into becoming citizens.’ So they see lack of citizenship as being willful, when in truth they would do anything to get it. It’s a very long, difficult, expensive process—and it is not open to everyone.” In the meantime, NAW provides a place where they can get questions answered and needs met, where they can learn information to help their health, their families, and their prospects.
Now grown, Sergio Perez became the first full time Executive Director at 32 years of age. Besides attending Plan Vacacional and ESL classes over the years, Sergio joined the organization as a volunteer when he was 17. Reflecting on the promotion, he self-effacingly claims, “The title does not mean anything. It’s a grassroots organization. There is just one other paid full-time staff member, and four part-time. We all do all of the same work.” The board is composed entirely of first generation immigrants. Dina acknowledges that they don’t have traditional board skills, but “they know what people need and how to present it. They are the community.”
Dina still teaches ESL twice a week at NAW, though she has retired from the college. Wednesday is for beginners and Thursday is for more advanced students. Sometimes she brings food, sometimes other people do, but there is always food, and often the first thing someone does when they walk in is look around and see what’s on offer to eat. When presentations are held in the evening—like a recent one that taught parents what drugs look like and that they might be among their kids’ belongings—people will sometimes stay to make and share dinner together. “They are good cooks,” Dina says. “They don’t measure anything. They like to cook, and they are very jolly when they are cooking—and even jollier when they are eating!”
When reflecting on her time with NAW, Dina shares, “I like hanging out with the employees and the board—I like being a member of it, one of the gang. They like teachers and they like old people, so it’s a good place for me to hang.” She smiles and continues, “And I love teaching. It’s a hilarious job. People feel free enough to make mistakes that turn out to be hilarious. They will go for it, head down laughing and slapping the table. At the beginning of the class they will talk about a few recent horrors, and then I say, ‘Okay, mijos, let’s get happy.’ And we change the scene.” Which is just what Nuestra Alianza did when it started—envisioned a different scene for its community and made it happen, embodying the resourcefulness, compassion, and grassroots grit this country has long purported to admire.
Nuestra Alianza de Willits
291 School St, Suite 1, Willits
(707) 456-9418 | nuestraalianzadewillits.org
Group photo by Michael Deer. All photos courtesy of Nuestra Alianza.