A Summer of Joy and Resilience at Dulce Esperanza
On a recent afternoon, three girls scampered down the hall at Dulce Esperanza, a summer camp in Orange County. Grinning ear to ear, they carried stuffed animals, fabric scraps, and a stapler to a spot by a window, where they made outfits and a cardboard house for their furry friends.
Down the hall, Yaretzi and Emely were making friendship bracelets. They’re best friends — after all, they share a birthday. Elsewhere, there was volleyball, yoga, art, tent-making, water fights, mischief, friendship, and joy. Even the teenagers weren’t really on their devices.
Not present was fear, which surprised at least one visitor. Dulce Esperanza is a day camp for the children of migrant farmworkers. And the parents of these kids, along with many others just like them, have been squarely in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s administration.
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“They don’t have to worry about any sort of judgment here,” said Jazmin Sanchez, who teaches the youngest children at the camp. She added that sometimes the children will talk about their home lives, including asking to bring snacks home to their families.
In many ways, Dulce Esperanza is like any other summer camp. Children build friendships, learn skills, and spend time in nature being kids. But here, the children speak Spanish and come from low-income families who may be in the country illegally. For families who work long hours, Dulce Esperanza can be a lifeline. Beset by high poverty rates and a child care crisis, farmworking parents often leave their children at home alone or bring them to the field.
The Trump administration is also seeking to bar immigrant families lacking legal status from qualifying for Head Start, the federally funded preschool program. “Without this camp, many of these kids would face physical and social isolation,” said Jobeth Leon, an outreach coordinator at Warwick Area Farmworker Organization, the nonprofit that houses Dulce Esperanza. “The camp gives them a chance to simply be kids, offering a safe, supportive environment that helps keep them out of trouble and protects their mental well-being.”
A Legacy of Support
The concept of a summer program for the children of farmworkers has a long history in the Black Dirt region of Orange County, known for its mineral-rich soil. In 1959, recognizing the need for health and social services for farmworkers in the area, the Orange County Council of Churches established the Warwick Area Migrant Committee. The organization, a precursor to the Warwick Area Farmworker Organization, created a summer program for children as early as 1964.
Research has shown that children of migrant farmworkers nationwide are significantly impacted by poverty, language barriers, lack of transportation, and constant mobility. As a result, as many as half drop out before completing high school. Child care for migrant farmworkers in Warwick was taken on in the 1990s by two Catholic nuns, Sisters Fran Liston and Pam Wagner, who formed a day care center called Mustard Seed Migrant Ministry.
When they retired in 2016, a coalition formed by the Warwick Area Migrant Committee, the Alamo Community Center, Hudson River HealthCare, Migrant Education, and local parents and volunteers came together to start a summer program they called Dulce Esperanza, or “sweet hope” in Spanish.
Today, five board members from the Warwick Area Farmworker Organization work in the fields themselves, which gives them a sense of “empowerment, responsibility and leadership,” Leon said. Dulce Esperanza had 90 campers this year and 20 staff members, including bilingual counselors who started as campers. The camp has welcomed more than 700 children since starting in 2017, according to Kathy Brieger, co-founder of the camp and executive director of the Warwick Area Farmworker Organization. “Of the students enrolled in our Dulce Esperanza program, we see most graduate (high school),” she said.
A Safe Space for Growth
Middletown native Vanessa Ortiz’s childhood was similar to that of many other children of migrant farmworkers. Starting at 12, she would spend spring break and after-school evenings working in the field, planting onions with her mother and two sisters. She joined Dulce Esperanza as a counselor three years ago. Ortiz, 20, now works at Dulce Esperanza as a program coordinator during the summers while attending college for political science. This year, her school offered her a job on campus, but she turned it down to return to Dulce Esperanza because she’s become attached to the children.
“Two of my siblings are in college, so I’m by myself at home with my mom. They are my only social (outlet),” said Ortiz, referring to the campers. “It makes me feel less lonely.” Janice Bonagura, a special education teacher at SS Seward Institute, said she’s willing to give up her summers off to return to teach at Dulce Esperanza. After four years, she said she’s not ready to retire.
“We love the kids all the way to the end,” Bonagura said. Five days a week from July to August, children ages six to 13 from five different school districts — Warwick, Florida, Goshen, Minisink, and Middletown — meet at one of the district’s schools and practice reading and writing and learn math and science with certified teachers. It’s not all academics, though. Afternoons are spent playing volleyball, dancing, making arts and crafts, and taking cooking workshops.
This summer, the campers are taking swimming lessons for the first time in Dulce Esperanza’s eight-year history, which became a certified state day camp through the Orange County Department of Health this year. It is a big deal for the campers, including the older counselors who never learned how to swim due to a lack of access to swimming pools, Leon said. “It was amazing to see,” she said. “Just seeing the faces of these kids when they got into the water was really neat.”
Most of the children are bussed to and from camp and provided three meals a day. Everything is included in the cost of $210 per child for seven weeks. If a family cannot afford it, Leon said the organization looks for ways to either have them volunteer or cover the costs through donations.
To keep going, Dulce Esperanza relies on grants and donations, with transportation and staffing being the biggest challenges, said Leon, who is also an employee of Sun River Health, one of the camp’s partners. While the Warwick Area Farmworker Organization is working on more quantitative data on the program’s impact, Leon said at least 10 of the children who have grown up participating in the organization’s programs or whose families use their services graduated from high school this year. At least eight of those are headed to college, while one is going to a trade school. None of the older program participants are going into farm work, Leon said.
“I think for parents, most importantly, is that they came here, sacrificed themselves, put in the hard work because they want to see their kids have a better life,” she said. Teachers, counselors, and volunteers generally consider Dulce Esperanza a haven from the outside world, but sometimes decisions made in Albany and Washington, D.C., seep in.
“There are some kids who have mentioned, ‘I can’t go out because my parents are scared,'” Ortiz said. But eventually, the children who at first hesitated to open up come out of their shells. By the last week of camp, “they’re crying because they don’t want to leave each other,” Ortiz said.
August will arrive in a few weeks, and soon, the campers will say goodbye. But next summer is always around the corner. “This is a safe space for a lot of these kids. They’re just like everyone else,” Leon said. “They deserve a chance to experience what every other average kid gets to experience during the summer.”
