El Centro

"CORE El Centro offers healing to all individuals and communities and has a passion to create access for those who are low of income. We provide integrative healing therapies designed to nourish body, mind, and spirit in a culturally sensitive environment. Through individual services, coalition building and leadership development, we create holistic programs to achieve health equity and to inspire individuals, families and communities to optimal health." At CORE El Centro we have a varitey of different roles that are accomplished by either working, volunteering, or using services. Which role would you like to take on today? [[White customer named Elanore ->Eleanore]] [[Hispanic customer named Maria ->Maria]] [[Hispanic volunteer named Carlos ->Carlos]] [[ White American worker named Paul-> Paul]]

You are a white, middle-aged, female. You have an office job in the Discover building in downtown Milwaukee. You never have to worry about if you can afford something or who is going to watch your kids when you go to work. Your first language is English and you are not fluent in any other languages. You make enough money to be able to afford a car. [[continue]]

You are a Hispanic, middle-aged, female. You work as a cashier at Whole Foods and have 4 children. Two of your four children are not old enough to go to school and you don't make enough money to always send them to a day care. You don't make enough money to be able to afford a car, so you take the bus or walk everywhere. [[ continue]]

You are a Mexican, teenage, male volunteer at CORE El Centro. You chose this agency as your service learning task. Your job at CORE El Centro is to greet clients as they come in, ask if they would like tea or water to drink, or help with tasks at the front desk. Your first language is Spanish but you are more comfortable speaking in English. Another portion of your volunteering is to attend a class that is offered during the time you are at CORE El Centro. You are a college student and don't have a car, so you take the bus route for 45 minutes to CORE El Centro when you volunteer. [[ continue]]

You are feeling stressed out. You've had a heavy work load the past couple of days at work and your kids are always trying to argue with you. Your husband has been working late nights and can never help around the house and you've been taking care of everything. How are you going to handel the stress you are feeling? [[Stay home from work]] [[go to El Centro]]

Staying at home from work isn't the greatest option in this situation. Chances are if you stayed at home while being stressed, you would start overthinking all your current problems. That would most likely stress you out even more. If you weren't overthinking your situation, you would probably be taking a nap and when you wake up you would feel rested, but maybe not stress-free.

Great idea!! You send the kids off to a baby sitter and get in your car to drive over to CORE El Centro. When you get there, Edith, the receptionist gives you a list of services that are offered at El Centro. You narrow your chices of yoga, zumba, ballet, massage, acupuncture, or riki down to three options. Your final choice? [[ yoga]] [[ massage]] [[ acupuncture]]

You are having troubles with work and finding a babysitter everyday that fits in with your budget. It's always a stuggle to get places because you have to take the bus. Working at Whole Foods is not a great source of income and you start to become very stressed. How are you going to choose to deal with your stress? [[ Stay home from work]] [[ go to El Centro]]

A friend told you about a place called Core/El Centro that helps with stress and physical problems that don't need a doctors attention. Upon arriving there you are relived that the receptionist speaks spanish since your english isn't very good. The receptionst tells you all the services El Centor offers from daycare, yoga classes, to different types of massage therapies. You send your children to daycare right there in the same building and decide what you want to do at El Centro. [[yoga]] [[massage]] [[acupuncture]]

You decided to try out yoga, upon entering the room you see that it there are other Hispanic women in there. You put your mat down next to a woman who look about your age. You start up a conversation by asking her how long she's been coming here. She tells you that she been coming here for about 3 months and it has really helped her with stress. The instructor begins to teach class in English and you have a very hard time understanding. During the whole entire class period you spend more time watching the instructor perform the poses because you can't understand them. You don't get much yoga practice in due to this unfortunate circumstance. [[continue ]]

Your masseuse greets you with "Hola!" and you respond. You feel welcomed that they can speak your first language because you aren't that great at English. You get into the room and they start to speak to you in English, saying Hola was decieving and they don't actually speak much Spanish. You just nod at what they say and continue on with your session. [[continue ]]

You decide to try acupuncture and meet the acupuncturist Paul. Paul introduces himself in Spanish and says that he only knows a bit of Spanish, but thats okay because Katrina is there to translate. [[after acupuncture session]]

You decide to go to yoga. When you enter the yoga studio you see that the only people there are Hispanic women. You feel out of place because you are not used to being in a situation where you are the only white person present. You place your mat down between two Mexican ladies who look to be in thier late 40's. One of them says hello to you in spanish. [[ reply hi in english]] [[ reply hi in spanish]]

You meet Paul, the acupuncturist, and he tells you how acupunture helps relive stress and balance energy in the body. He tells you that acupuncture therapy works the greatest when done every 4-6 weeks. So, you make another appointment 4 weeks from now. [[after acupuncture]]

Helping out there isn't too hard, or so you heard. The only hard part is deciding to greet someone in Spanish or English. Unlucky for you, on your first day it gets really busy. It's winter so people are looking for something to do indoors. While the receptionists are busy signing new people up for classes, Paul, the accupuncturist, comes to the lobby looking for a translator. The receptionists are too busy to help Paul so he asks you if you could translate. [[say "yeah, sure"]] [[say your not comfortable enough with your Spanish to be a translator]]

You decide to get a massage and get introduced to the massage therapist Katie. Katie's massage felt waaaaay better than the ones your husband usually gives you. Katie used the right amount off force to massage the deep tissue which left you feeling amazing. [[after massage]]

You are a white, older, male. You work as CORE El Centro's accupuncturiest. The majority of your clients are Hispanic/Latino, but sometimes you have white clients too. [[ continue]]

You have treated a couple of clients already and they all spoke enough English for you to understand. You go out the the waiting area to grab your next client, Abby. You realize that she doesn't speak any English and cannot understand you. You look over to the receptionist and see that she is very busy and cannot help you translate your session. You look around, trying to figue out what to do and realize theres a hispanic volunteer working right now. You are unsure what to do and finally decide to... [[tell the client you can't find a translator]] [[ask Carlos, the volunteer, to translate]]

Staying home from work would mean that you have to take care of the two kids that are not old enough for school yet. Staying home would also mean losing money for a day of work. With having to deal with the stress of your two kids and financial problems, you would still be very stressed out at the end of the day. This was not the greatest option you could have chosen.

You say hi to her in english and try to start a conversation by asking how long she has been coming here. You quickly realize that she barley knows any english. [[start talking in spanish-> reply hi in spanish]] [[give up on trying to conversate]]

Luckly you took 4 years of spanish in high school and actually know enough to hold a conversation. The lady, whose name you learn to be Juana, tells you how much she loves doing yoga. Juana tells you how ever since she started doing yoga it has helped reduce the stress in her life. [[instructor walks in]]

The instructor walks in and the class begins. You feel a bit awkward doing some of the poses, but Juana tells you you're doing great. You are able to perform all the poses and understand the instuctor because she is speaking English, your first language! [[end of class]]

At the end of class Juana asks if you're going to keep coming. You tell her yeah! On your way home you think about El Centro and how everyone in their was so nice. Although the yoga was a relaxing class, what made you say yes to Juana was the people who worked there. Lowering your stress levels was simple because everyone at CORE El Centro speaks English, which made it a lot easier to make it throught the day. Completing a task for you is always great because most people who hold a higher power are able to speak English. From spending your day at El Centro and attending 2 different sessions your total cost was $49. You overheard the hispanic woman paying next to you and realized that she only payed $15 for one service. You don't say anything because you don't want to make a scene, so when you get home you go to their website. [[find out why]]

Luckily the instructor walked in so you it was easy to find a reason to stop talking to the lady. Since it was your first time doing yoga you felt a bit awkward of doing some of the poses. [[after class]]

After the class you felt awkward and embarassed because you didn't know if you were doing it right and felt concerned everyone was judging you. You don't plan on returning to yoga class. On your way home you think to yourself that maybe you should have talked more with the lady in yoga. From spending your day at El Centro and attending 2 different sessions your total cost was $49. You overheard the hispanic woman paying next to you and realized that she only payed $15 for one service. You don't say anything because you don't want to make a scene, so when you get home you go to their website. [[find out why]]

Acupunture felt great and it made your body feel relaxed. But, Paul suggests to try yoga since it can be part of a lifestlye. You decide to do yoga since Paul was very kind and did a great job so he must know what he is talking about. [[go to yoga-> yoga]]

After the massage Katie tells you to try yoga since it can help your muscles and body be relaxed all the time. You decide to give it a go since Kaite was very kind and you wanted to feel like this all the time. [[go to yoga-> yoga]]

You say yes to Paul so you go into his "office" and he introduces you to his client, a middle aged Mexican woman named Abby. He goes over the procedure and you tranlate it to Abby, easy stuff. Once the procedure starts you stay and watch since you've never seen it done before and were curious how it looked. [[continue ]]

You don't help Paul out so you just stay in the lobby greeting people. This gets pretty boring and you feel like you should be doing more but don't know what to do. [[distrupt the receptionist and ask her if she needs help]] [[be bored]]

The receptionist tells you that she doesn't need any help, that you should've helped Paul. So you go back to your desk and continue greeting people until it's time for your yoga class. [[yoga time]]

You spend your first hour of volunteering at the desk greeting people until it is time for your yoga class. [[yoga time]]

Before the yoga class you help the instructor set up the mats for people. As people start coming in you feel wierd since they are all middle aged women. [[during yoga]]

At first you weren't sure about yoga since it's something you thought was mainly for women, but after that class you felt great. You didn't really care if someone was watching you because you would never see these old ladies outside of El Centro. [[thoughts on volunteering here]]

Once Paul finishes, he tells you to tell Abby to try out yoga because it could really benefit her. She says maybe another day since she had to go to work right now. Paul thanks you for translating and says you did an amazing job. Now its time for yoga. [[yoga time ]]

Your day at CORE El Centro started out good while talking with the receptionist. As your day continued on you had the struggle of English not being your first language and found it hard to attend the session you chose. You have mixed feelings about wanting to come back to CORE El Centro agian. You decide that if you do end up coming back again, you will call first and find out which days and what times sessions are being held in Spanish or if they can get a Spanish speaking translator. You reflect on today and realize that not having your first language as English is a struggle that you have to deal with most days. Being apart of the Spanish speaking community, this turns into a normal thing that the English speaking communities wouldn't even have thoughts about. Due to this, it makes it harder to accomplish every day tasks that may be simpler for others. [[time to pay]]

Since you can't communicate with Abby you can't perform the treatment as you need to know that nothing is making Abby uncomfortable during the treatment. With the little bit of Spanish that you know you tell her to wait 15 minutes. She says she can't because she is on a tight schedule and has to go to work. Abby is now very disappointed and feels discriminated against. You could have made a better choice and asked Carlos to be a translator to help out your client. Abby now goes home very upset and feels worthless because she doesn't speak English and can't revieve the same treatment as their fellow white, English speaking peers can. This is NOT acceptable at Core/El Centro!!!

It's your lucky day! All you had to do was build up a little courage to ask the volunteer to translate because Carlos said yes to being your translator for your next session! Because Carlos said yes, you now can help out your client. You made your client feel worthy and they saw that you can go the extra step to help them out. Your client has now gained your trust and feels safe and accepted here at CORE El Centro. Amazing decision!!! [[next]]

Paul was very kind and thoughtful. He spoke in short senteces to make it easy for Katrina to translate everything. Katrina was also very kind asking if there was anything else you wanted to know about accupuncture. Katrina then tells you that Paul suggests you take the yoga class next because it goes well with accupuncture therapy. [[go to yoga class???]]

You tell them that you would love to go to yoga class but you can't because you have to go to work. They then tell you that you don't have to go right now but can come back later. To which you respond that you have to wait for all your kids to get back from school and by the time they all get back El Centro will be closed by then. You say your goodbyes and leave. [[time to pay ]]

You think that El Centro is a really nice place. They tried to make you feel welcomed and comfortable, which they succeeded in. The accupuncture session was also very need and left you feeling relaxed. You plan on making more appointments with them and hoping you get the chance to try some of their movement classes some day.

You think you have a very boring job to do, and that you should do more than just be a greeter (should've helped translate!!!). But the feeling you get when in the building is great since everyone is in a happy mood. Yoga was also pretty great, you now know why all those old ladies were doing it. You enjoyed seeing how Hispanics and white Americans were doing the same activities together. At first you thought it was wierd that the costumers would come up the the receptionist and talk to them about their problems. Then you realized that Core is more than just a place to get a nice massage, it's a community. Core/El Centro's goal isn't just to provide different kind of therapies, but to create a place were people can come to release stress and talk about thier problems.

Before the yoga class you help the instructor set up the mats for people. As people start coming in you feel wierd since they are all middle aged women. [[during yoga ]]

You thhink that working here is kinda boring, but helping translate was pretty fun. It made you feel like you were actually helping out in an important way. Also, the feeling you get when in the building is great since everyone is in a happy mood. Yoga was also pretty great, you now know why all those old ladies were doing it. You enjoyed seeing how Hispanics and white Americans were doing the same activities together. At first you thought it was wierd that the costumers would come up the the receptionist and talk to them about their problems. Then you realized that Core is more than just a place to get a nice massage, it's a community. Core/El Centro's goal isn't just to provide different kind of therapies, but to create a place were people can come to release stress and talk about thier problems.

Abby was your last client for a while so you decide to do some yoga. This is why you love your job. If you don't have any clients and finished all your paperwork you are free to take any classes you like. Doing yoga, zumba, and the other movement classes have kept in great shape. You hope to work here until you are forced to retire!

El Centro basis their prices off of the customers income. People from different backgrounds and lifestyles pay different prices. There is a choice for people to leave donations if they want to.

You found the services super cheap as you only payed $15. You asked the receptionist if it's the same price for everyone. She tells you that the prices for the services you recieved depend on your income.