Mission Promise Neighborhood Partner Interview Series (Part 1): Tandem Partners In Early Learning

"CPNN, in partnership with Mission Promise Neighborhood, interviewed three of their MPN partners: Tandem, Partners in Early Learning, Mission Graduates, and Jamestown Community Center. In our interviews with each organization, we learned why their community-rooted services are so vital to the Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN) model, how they work across different community partners to maximize their reach, and why collaboration is key for them. We are proud to share our interview conversation with Tandem, Partners in Early Learning. CPNN will be sharing the other two conversations throughout the Summer.

Tandem, Partners in Early Learning is working at the intersection of social justice and early childhood education. Collaborating alongside Bay Area school districts, early childhood education providers, and community-based organizations, they strive to co-create equitable, high-quality early learning experiences for children. Abriendo Puertas is a national curriculum that focuses on early childhood development, early literacy, health, social-emotional well-being, numeracy, school preparation, and parent advocacy. In San Francisco, Tandem’s Early Learning Specialist Margarita Gomez and San Francisco Program Supervisor Carola Mulero, are local practitioners leveraging this service model to listen to and implement services based on the critical needs of the local community.

In our interview with Margarita and Carola, we learned about how their work with Tandem through Abriendo Puertas is bridging crucial resources and holistic support to empower underserved mothers, children, and families⁠.

Interviewer: Why is your work vital to the Mission District and the community?

Margarita Gomez: My job is to be a facilitator of the Abriendo Puertas program, where I receive the recently arrived immigrant community members and guide them in the education of their children. It is a popular educational program, in the sense that from home we can be the teachers—the  first teachers of our children. I teach them how to advocate for their children in schools, at the doctor's, and how to guide them in healthy, wholesome nutrition. We connect them with resources in MEDA and across other MPN partners, which in turn helps them find housing, jobs, computer classes, food, since we know that they are newcomers. We direct them and we guide them to where they can go. These are through sessions in which all the mothers participate and learn from each other.

Interviewer: What exactly is the work that you do with Abriendo Puertas?

Margarita: We implement Abriendo Puertas twice a year, with a total of 30 mothers. We hold 10 meetings with them, and distribute 120 books among participants during each session. This material is important because it is how they have the tools to be able to start reading to their little ones at an early age. We also listen to the needs of the mothers, which is what is important. Through the different Tandem programs, I also offer readings to the children and technical assistance and workshops to the educators in the schools. I also offer playgroups in some of the different agencies.

Carola: We have programs in the mission that are dedicated to the more formal schools, such as the district schools. Then we also have formal schools, but they are run by agencies. Through another program that we have called Read&Play, we also offer playgroups and facilitate workshops for educators from this program who have family childcare. So Margarita offers a demonstration of how to do a reading and then, based on that reading, she has already developed an activity and facilitates the activity with the mothers, with the fathers, with the caregivers who are present, and the children. The goal is for them to learn, to teach them from a more open point of view, one that is not obligatory.

Interviewer: What partnerships within the MPN network complement or maximize your work?

Carola: MEDA [the backbone agency for Mission Promise Neighborhood] is a great resource for Margarita because every time she facilitates the Opening Door sessions, she is constantly connecting to the mothers within the different services that MEDA has. In regards to housing, for example, there are many mothers who, when they arrive, do not have a home, so Margarita connects them with MEDA too. MEDA helps them find accommodations and settles them.

There are also English classes. Through these classes, Margarita creates that bridge to the Department of Education because they are the ones who provide the funding for the schools and agencies that Margarita works with in the Mission.

Another example– there is a very important event that takes place in the Spring called Children's Book Day, and if I remember correctly, we have been participating in this event for six years now, which is a very big event in the Mission neighborhood organized by the San Francisco Library. Margarita leads it with volunteers that she works with through Opening Doors. She even knows the people she serves, and through Tandem, we donate 400 books, most of them in Spanish or bilingual, so that there is also exposure to Spanish and facilitation to English as well. And this is an event organized by the San Francisco Library.

Interviewer: How does collaboration with MPN partners create greater impact for mission families?

Margarita: The truth is we are connected, and the impact is that mothers, especially new mothers, are the ones who have the greatest need. They come homeless, they arrive at a shelter, and they arrive with practically nothing. So, what we do is connect them so that they can get all the available resources to help the immigrant community. For example, MPN is connected to Support for Families, an agency that goes to mothers who have children with disabilities. The families connect with that agency, and that agency guides them. Support for Families are not therapists, they are not doctors, but they have all the connections to send the mother with the needs that the child has to them. And it is a great help, as I say, they guide them, because they arrive without knowing where to go.

Since we started Abriendo Puertas, those contacts, those families, those mothers, don't just disappear like that, they're done, okay, goodbye. No, we follow up with them. We continue giving them resources. They also send us messages. For example, one mother whose girl is already in third grade sent us messages, thanking us for the support, thanking us for the tools, thanking us for the books we gave her for her daughter.

And that is what we do, to ensure that these contacts are not lost.

Carola: Through the different programs that we have at Tandem, one is called Story Cycles, which is a bag rotation program through the schools, and Margarita is in charge of that. She visits the classes and she is on top of the teacher and tells him how it is going, how the rotation is going, whether it is working or not, and how they can help them. Margarita is constantly helping the Story Cycles program work, and when it works, the children, in the end access at least 100 books a year. We offer each child in family care receives 10 books a year, and activity guides with materials in a backpack. We also offer them 4 playgroups a year that are in Spanish, Chinese and English, we do everything at the same time. Then each of the educators receives a monthly workshop based on a topic that they have indicated at the beginning of the year.

Each of our programs is designed and created to listen to the needs of the participants. If the teacher, for example, is not rotating the book bag, it is an indicator that we have to listen to the teacher and offer alternatives so that the children continue to have access to those books.

There are surveys that we do as well for the moms that Margarita also facilitates at Opening Doors, which is why I was saying we go in the direction that (the mothers) direct us.