CentroNía

Please note: this Investment Summary represents VPP's perspective at the time of the investment agreement, February, 2004, as well as CentroNía's former name Calvary Bilingual Multicultural Learning Center.

1. Social impact: Calvary’s service area encompasses the following neighborhoods: Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant, Adams Morgan, and Shaw. Its constituents are low-to-moderate income working families, many headed by single parents. The neighborhoods served by Calvary are predominantly Latino, African-American, and multiracial. Children who receive Calvary’s services benefit in a number of ways including:
   a. improved readiness for school;
   b. access to a safe, nurturing environment that prepares them to understand and adapt to cultural and linguistic differences in America; and
   c. exposure to a creative learning environment that encompasses the creative arts and technology.
2. Demonstrated performance: Calvary has a 16-year track record of delivering youth and family services to a diverse constituency. Its reputation, particularly in its delivery of early-childhood and out-of-school programs, is excellent. Several young adults who attended Calvary as youngsters now have their children enrolled in the program; others have returned to work or volunteer at the center. Calvary has a formula for success. The model is to provide programming that engages the family throughout the child’s development from birth through the 12th grade. Despite more than doubling the number of children served in three years, there is a substantial waiting list for enrollment in Calvary’s programs. Supported by a Kellogg grant, Calvary is in the process of documenting its model so that it can be packaged and shared with others.
3. Future aspirations: Calvary plans to build on its reputation and demonstrated performance in underserved, multi-ethnic communities to become a market leader. Calvary’s future goals include increasing the level of services provided to its current constituency as well as taking those services into other neighborhoods with similar demographics. Calvary is anxious to partner with others to expand its service delivery. In the first stage of expansion, it is looking at nearby organizations like the Carlos Rosario Charter School and the Dance Institute of Washington as partners for its early-childhood program. Partner organizations in other neighborhoods have not yet been identified, although Calvary’s executive director has made contacts and begun to explore ideas in neighborhoods including Petworth, Langley Park, Silver Spring, and South Arlington.

1. Longevity/sustainability: The organization has a track record that spans nearly two decades. It has a proven model for service delivery. It has already proven its ability to grow its organization and the breadth and depth of its services. In the most recent three-year period, Calvary has doubled its budget, staff size, and numbers served. Calvary’s executive director led a successful capital campaign to raise $2.3 million of the $5.6 million cost for completely renovating a 73,000-square-foot facility, transforming an abandoned building into a state-of-the-art facility that includes a childcare center, a dance studio, a community technology lab, a commercial kitchen, and a rooftop playground. The balance of the funds was secured through Community Development Block Grants and bank loans.
2. Leadership, management team, and board: Calvary has a competitive, charismatic, highly impassioned leader in Beatriz “BB” Otero, and one who has proven adept in managing rapid growth. She has grown Calvary from a grassroots “group of moms” effort housed in a local church basement to an organization with a staff of over 100, a 73,000-square-foot facility, and an annual budget of $4 million, providing a comprehensive range of services to an expanding constituent base. She has also shown strong leadership within the Latino community and among nonprofit organizations in the District of Columbia. Calvary has built a strong management team for its organizational stage, including a program director who is an authority in the area of child development, a finance director who is a CPA with corporate experience, an admin/ops director who is a home-grown product of the Calvary model, and a development director who has over 10 years experience in the nonprofit sector and a proven track record as a fund raiser. Calvary’s board is also diverse, effective, and engaged. The board’s chair, Chuck Bean, is executive director of the region’s new Nonprofit Roundtable.
3. Community support: Calvary is first and foremost a community organization—one that enjoys the support of the communities served and that takes special care to incorporate community resources. Calvary is especially proud of the extent to which critical staff have been recruited from the surrounding neighborhood.
4. Established relationship: Calvary was a partner organization in the Morino Institute’s Youth Development Collaborative (YDC) Pilot. Calvary worked in an intense relationship with the pilot staff from 1998 into 2001, so the groundwork for a trusting relationship has already been well established.