Through our National Center for Grieving Children and Families we provide support and training locally, nationally and internationally to individuals and organizations seeking to assist children in grief.
These days, if you call The Dougy Center, you might talk to Ruben Garcia. If you get his voice mail, you will quickly realize that there is both an English and a Spanish version of his message. Ruben is The Dougy Center’s first Bilingual Program Coordinator and was hired to lay the foundation for expanding our grief support services to local Latino families. Ruben comes to us with a Masters degree in adult education from the University of Portland. He has extensive experience working with at-risk Latino youth and families through The Portland Public Schools where his responsibilities included mentoring, case-management and after-school programs for elementary and high school students. Ruben has worked with many culturally specific organizations in the community including Oregon Council for Hispanic Advancement (OCHA), Self Enhancement, Inc. (SEI) and El Programma Hispano. He brings with him a wealth of knowledge about the Latino culture and valuable community connections to aid our expansion efforts.
As we move toward our goal of providing bilingual grief support groups at various locations in our community, there are three components that are vital to the success of our project and integral to Ruben’s work: 1) recruiting and training bilingual volunteers facilitators; 2) translating our grief resource materials into Spanish; and 3) building partnerships with organizations and professionals within the Latino community and at the non-profit, local and state level.
In addition to spending time with his four kids ranging in age from 8 to 20 years old, Ruben likes to write, paint and dance and is already well-known around The Dougy Center for his fabulous Mexican cooking. Ruben was drawn to his work at The Dougy Center because his “most successful experiences in life have been helping kids through peer support.” He goes on to say “I have the compassion and the passion for this job. Given the right tools, I know I can make a real difference.”
