By The Star Staff
With the joy of expanding its services to some 500 families in the Caguas community, Nuestra Escuela (Our School) this week inaugurated the new 2 Generations Center (2 Gen), which is part of an innovative program of the Administration for the Comprehensive Care and Development of Children (ACUDEN by its acronym in Spanish).
“At Nuestra Escuela we do not only enroll boys and girls, but we enroll families. Here in this 2 Gen Center they will have a self-care center open to the entire community that will allow them to grow as families,” said Ana Yris Guzmán, president and co-founder of Nuestra Escuela. “It is a project full of details and beauty like those that Puerto Rico needs. The spaces to serve our communities can be beautiful and this project achieves that. It is a refuge and also a platform to enhance the development of our families. We want what their eyes see to have that loving spark of healing and development of our families.”
“There is much to celebrate,” she added.
The 2 Gen Centers are an initiative aimed at early childhood development and learning that extends to parents or caregivers, offering integrated services and resources to the entire family, including health guidance, nutrition, safety, referrals, parent workshops, coordination of mental and behavioral health services, first aid, a virtual library, financial training modules for parents and caregivers, and support for economic sustainability.
At the opening ceremony, Guzmán was accompanied by several officials: Caridad Pierluisi, executive director of the Office of the Governor of Puerto Rico, Family Secretary Ciení Rodríguez Troche and ACUDEN Administrator Roberto Carlos Pagán, as well as by parents of the school community and by students of Nuestra Escuelita, who were dressed in uniforms of different professions and trades.
Pierluisi noted that “each project at Nuestra Escuela has been done with a lot of love and we are very proud to support them.”
“The 2 Gen Centers are something very special because they work with early childhood, but also with parents, grandparents, uncles, and the entire community,” she said. “We help them with anything they need, any training. These 2 Gen Centers are oases of peace.”
The ACUDEN administrator called the new center “another dream come true.”
“Nuestra Escuela is synonymous with commitment, passion, with a history of loving services to children and families. The 2 Gen Centers are a cornerstone to continue expanding services and providing guidance, now not only with children but with their parents and the entire community,” Pagán said. “I am starting out as a father and when I arrive at these 2 Gen Centers my perspective changes and I confirm that it is a place where I would take my son.”
For the Caguas project, the facilities of a building adjacent to Nuestra Escuela were rebuilt and furnished, which will serve some 500 families a year in the new center. There are play areas for children, offices, conference rooms, several attractive lounges and libraries with computers for community use. The 2 Gen Center will be under the direction of Shanira Pabón.
“The success [of the 2 Gen Centers] is that we went outside the box and began to work directly in the communities,” said Rodríguez Troche, the Family secretary. “We hope that these centers become those spaces where families can come and, apart from receiving guidance and services, they are their spaces of respite.”
The 2 Gen Centers are subsidized by funds from the Child Care Project.
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