A women's program at the center helps women and their families obtain health care, child care, family planning and Medicaid for children born in the U.S. There is also a Safe Home program which uses stipends to place women and their chidren with Hispanic families for one month, long enough for the women to find employment, says Annette Diaz, coordinator of the women's program.

"These women are generally very poor people because they can't find jobs. I looked for places which would take children in for little money," says Annie F. Pforzheimer '86 about her volunteer work at Centro Presente last summer.

Centro Presente has also been participating in activities "to change the basic structures which are at the root of unjust immigration laws," Cummins says. Centro workers have targeted American foreign policy in Central American countries and domestic immigration laws which comply with these policies as their main problems, she says.

As part of their effort to change the laws, the center has joined several class action suits intended to change current immigration policies on local, state and national levels. Recently, in the case Centro Presente vs. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the center succeeded inestablishing that refugees who were arrested andheld in the local detention center have the rightto see visitors, including legal representatives."Now, legal services have open access toplaintiffs," Yozell says.

Harvard Role

Students from Harvard have volunteered atCentro Presente in previous years, but this is thefirst year that the center has actually made aneffort to reach out to college students. InSeptember, Gordon, the Harvard-Centro liaison, hada meeting for people who responded to postersasking for bilingual students who speak Spanish.

"At first, many people who go to work at CentroPresente feel lost because there are so manypeople working there, and it can be hard tounderstand where you fit in; and that is why I'macting as a student liaison between Harvard andCentro Presente," Gordon says.

Although most positions for students at thecenter are on a volunteer basis, two Harvardstudents currently receive money from federal andstate student employment programs for their workat Centro Presente.

Most Harvard students who volunteer at thecenter, like Brad P. Miller '88, say they find theCentro Presente experience valuable. "I'm tryingto imagine myself as a Central American refugeecoming here and knowing close to nothing about thecountry.