Enselma Vasquez School Road, Penasco, NM created on Thu October 24, 2013

My name is Enselma Vasquez. I have been in this area all my life. Many generations of my family, in fact 300 years, have lived in Northern New Mexico. I’m a Community Health Worker. I help families navigate low-income resources. I’ve only been working here since June. What we are doing now we are trying to support families with low income and single parents and parents that find themselves without a job or without education. We try and give them supportive parenting educations and we navigate resources for them as well.

I’m willing to help anyone I can. I won’t shut the door on anyone.

This community has a lot of pride. They need to trust the people. Getting the trust is really hard. Once you gain that trust it’s very easy to get them the resources they need. One barrier this community has is transportation. The other is language. Our language is different. It’s Spanglish. It’s a language that survived because people didn’t socially mobilize, they were used to staying for generations over here. They would make up words just to survive! This community knows that I have been a member for so long, so they can trust me and they come to me for resources.

To tell you the truth, it’s the trust issue. The trust in people. You really have to have a lot of compassion.

I’m thinking about enrolling. I believe a lot of people here have about 10,000-15,000 income and that’s with 2 or 3 children. I’m hoping people will enroll for Medicaid. My goal is try and get resources for these community members.