[title slide]
[title slide]
EDWARDS: My name's Cydney [Edwards] and I'll be your interviewer today. First
off I just want to start by saying thank you on behalf of the entire class and my group, Hector and Joshua, for agreeing to do this interview.SCHLUETER: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for thinking about the work we have
been doing. Small pieces.EDWARDS: So first, may you please state your full name, as well as your birth
date and birthplace?SCHLUETER: My maiden name actually is Romilia Escobar Diaz. My married name is
Schlueter, so Romilia Schlueter and I was born in El Salvador, Central America, October 7th, 1948.EDWARDS: Nice. And may you please state your parents' full names as well as
their birthdates and birthplaces? 00:01:00SCHLUETER: My mother's name is Romilia Diaz de Escobar and she was born in
Guatajiagua, that's a department of Morazán in El Salvador, Central America. Her birthday is October 8, 1916. My father's name is Jose Adolfo Escobar. He was born in the same town in Guatajiagua, Morazán, El Salvador and he was born a year before my mother, so 1915, if I am correct.EDWARDS: And we know that you have siblings. Can you tell us your siblings'
names as well as their birthdates and birthplaces?SCHLUETER: Uh-oh, that's a big [inaudible]. Yes, I am one of seven siblings that
we grew up together. Seven. Two died when they were very young. One died before she was a year old, her name was Virginia Escobar and I don't remember the year 00:02:00she was born. And then one of my siblings, Antonio, died also. He was drowned when he was eight years old in El Salvador. The seven siblings that I grew up with, the oldest one is Soila Esperanza Escobar. She never married, she had a child named Eduardo and they are still living in El Salvador, both of them. The next is Jose Drufo, Jr., Pepe, and Pepe was born in September 15 and he died when he was 33 years old and he has one son and he lives in California and is actually a teacher in a private school, his son. The next one is Teresa De Jesus 00:03:00and her married name is Frenzel and she lives in Hamburg, Germany. She has two daughters, Carmen and Claudia, and now they have their own families, too. After Teresa was. . . no, Carlos was younger than me. . . My goodness, too many people and too many years happen. So it is Tere and then is Tony, who I told you drowned when he was 8. And then me, I am the middle one. There were three before and three after then there was me. Then we have Carlos Ernesto who also died when he was very young, in his 30s, and he left one child to his wife who, after he died, moved to the States and Carlos Jr. is now teaching in California. Then 00:04:00we have Maria del Carmen Escobar, she is a civil engineer and she works in El Salvador, an environmentalist. She and her husband are both professors at the University in San Salvador. The youngest one, Lazaro Escobar, lives in Kitchener, Ontario. His whole family moved to Kitchener just before the war in El Salvador and his kids are working in the social services field. My nephew is a police officer in Ontario and my niece works with street youth, the homeless young people.EDWARDS: Thank you. What was it like growing up with so many siblings?
SCHLUETER: It was wonderful. It was challenging. I don't know any other way to
grow up but among all these siblings so it was full table for all meals and you 00:05:00couldn't say no to what you were eating because somebody else was going to eat it before you. So there was no squabbles in there. We had family meals, I remember that. It was really wonderful. Even lunch we would all come home and have lunch, even when I was working. I remember leaving work at noon, coming home, have lunch and then going back to the office an hour and a half later. Yeah. It was really nice. And then the support that you have when you have siblings. And my older siblings, my brother who died, he was just an amazing person. The older ones took the role of. . . it was almost like they were always supporting the work that the younger ones were doing. So when I wanted to learn English, for example, my brother said, "Go ahead, I will help you to pay for the 00:06:00classes." So it was that kind of stuff. Or if you wanted stuff that my parents wouldn't buy like slacks because women shouldn't wear slacks, my brother would say, "Don't worry, I'll talk to dad and I'll buy them for you." So, very cool people.EDWARDS: Yeah. What are some of the most memorable lessons that you learned from
your parents or from growing up with so many siblings?SCHLUETER: Family is very important and we all have moments when we need the
support and when we have to give the support, so having that base, strong base, that you know if mom and dad for whatever reasons can't be there with you, you have your brothers and your sisters to lean on and even now that we are all over the world, we go back to each other when we have needs, when we need somebody to 00:07:00talk to, when we need to complain about something, when we need to. . . Just when we were young, just help me to get this. Just a composition of the family and having such a strong network of support and grandparents. And some of my most cherished memories are my grandmother.EDWARDS: What do you recall as your first experience or encounter with volunteering?
SCHLUETER: I have volunteered all my life. My grandmother, I remember my grandma
used to volunteer in her church and I would go with her, and she was a catechist in San Miguel, actually, the town where I was born. Grandma would take me with her and I was very, very young, like six or seven years old, but because I knew the prayers by heart she would give me the little ones that needed to learn. 00:08:00"Teach them to do the sign of the cross. Teach them the 'Our Father'." And so I began being a catechist when I was in grade school and I have been volunteering all my life and I am still volunteering.EDWARDS: Can you speak to us about the types of service that you did as a
teenager?SCHLUETER: As a teenager, lots of those years I was in boarding school
so most of the services we did were through the school. I went to school in Guatemala for three years, the middle school years. I was in a Catholic boarding school and the Sister would take us to do services. They had a soup kitchen, for 00:09:00example, and we would help in the soup kitchen or we'd go and clean something. We would go and work with families in the communities, marginal communities, squatters, I guess they are. That kind of thing.EDWARDS: We noticed that a lot
of your work has to do with families and targeting early childhood. Can you speak to sort of the inception of that interest? When did that start?SCHLUETER:
Probably was born as a desire to share the good fortune I have had to have a very strong family. Because with children, when we want children to thrive, they need a strong family base. It doesn't matter how good the school is, it doesn't matter how many good programs there are in the community, if your family is not strong, you are in trouble. So that's part of it. The other part is life kind of guides you to the places where you need to be and if you embrace those moments, then they happen. So when my kids were growing up here in the States, I had the 00:10:00good fortune to be able to stay at home and so I volunteer in the schools, in the preschools, and in the scouts. I was a den mother and all these good things. I think those were the guides. Wherever my kids were, there I was. Whatever program they were taking part in, that's where I was volunteering. And I didn't go back to work here in the States until my kids were full-time in school. So that's why you saw a relatively short period, the last thirty years I have been working outside the home. It's the time when my children were full-time in school but I think that's what has guided whatever I do.EDWARDS: Did anything
about the field of early childhood development surprise you?SCHLUETER: More
like breaks my heart. There are lots of good things and there are lots of work 00:11:00that we need to do to make sure that kids are safe and we continue seeing the drive for our society for intervention programs and the very little regard for prevention programs. [cut] Working with families the last 15, 16 years, I volunteer with families forever, but in the early education field, I continue learning lots of lessons and some of the importance of strong families, but then the prevalence of abuse is what I'm thinking when I said it breaks my heart 00:12:00because there is so much of this and so much is related to factors that influence the family from the outside: poverty, addictions and all these kinds of stuff, but there is also the beautiful piece of so many people interested in doing something.EDWARDS: You spoke a little bit about the way your own family
has influenced your work. When did you make the decision to start your own family and can you tell us a little about your kids?SCHLUETER: I don't know if
I always thought about having a family, but I married late. I was thirty years old when I got married and I just fell in love with this gringo that came to El Salvador. [laughter] He came as a Peace Corps volunteer and I was working at the Peace Corps training center in San Salvador, so that's how we met. I never gave 00:13:00it a thought to. . . this is all very old school, very traditional families like when I was growing up, I never even had the concept of preventing a pregnancy or anything like that so yeah, we got married and had our first child very soon after we got married. We just built our family. It was just the natural thing to do. Nothing was planned. We just had our family.EDWARDS: How old are your
children now?SCHLUETER: My oldest is 33, the next one is 30, and then the
youngest is 29. They're all adults and they are all UW graduates.EDWARDS: Very
nice. May I ask, what was it like working in the Peace Corps? 00:14:00SCHLUETER: It was,
when you are 23 years old, really fascinating because I grew up in El Salvador, I had very little contact, never traveled outside Central America. Yes, a couple countries in Central America but nothing else and the Peace Corps was my introduction to this brand new first-world culture and it was my third job after graduating and so it was fascinating. It was lots of guys in there, cute guys and you just. . . and it was a really great job. We had opportunities to. . . Well, I had opportunities to practice my language, my second language, and going to the embassy, the American embassy and all these places so it was really fascinating. It was my introduction to first-world culture. 00:15:00EDWARDS: Can you
tell us a little bit about moving to Wisconsin?SCHLUETER: Moving to Wisconsin.
We didn't move from El Salvador to Wisconsin. We went in 1980 at the height of the war. That was the reason we left. We went to New York. We left in a hurry actually and stayed with my in-laws for 3 months until we found a job and so we moved to the Caribbean. There's a small island in the [inaudible] islands named Dominica. It's an English colony. So we were there for a couple years working with [inaudible] union. Joe was working, I was a stay-at-home mom and from there when the project ended in the island, the central quarters of the [inaudible] come to [inaudible] here in Wisconsin and that's why we came to Wisconsin and I 00:16:00was 8 months pregnant.EDWARDS: Wow. Can you tell us about your work with the
Wisconsin Governor's early childhood advisory council?SCHLUETER: I am in a
subcommittee, in a committee of that and so there are several. There is a whole. . . different layers, I am not in the council. I am just in one of the committees and we are working on early childhood issues, so connections with families, that kind of thing. And that's what brought me, they asked me to be there because it's the connections with the community, especially the Latino community.EDWARDS: Can you tell us a little bit about what an early childhood
screening and assessment sort of entails?SCHLUETER: I actually do the training.
[laughter] It's called "Ages and Stages" and the screening tool that we are using right now goes from birth to 16 months and the idea of this is to make 00:17:00sure that the children are developing at the rate that they should be developing according to age. And it measures language and math and social emotional and growth and fine motor skills so when you are able to detect delay early, you are able to do something about it right away instead of waiting until there are more serious issues. So we are trying to do this at the level of the childcare providers, actually, training them to use those tools so that more children can be detected if they have a problem or know that they are doing fine and then be happy with that.EDWARDS: And how did that procedure come about in Wisconsin and
what role did you personally play? 00:18:00SCHLUETER: At the level of establishing that
policy in Wisconsin, none. At the level of implementing it, big, because I am one. . . bilingual, one of the few bilingual trainers for that tool. In the cross-cultural, probably the only one at this point so I think the role of that grassroot level is. . . it will make an impact.EDWARDS: Can you tell us a
little bit of the history behind the Supporting Families Together Association?SCHLUETER: The Supporting Families Together Association is actually a very young
association. It's four, five, six years old, as it is, and it's part of a consortia so at this time, Supporting Families Together Association is managing 00:19:00grants that are statewide, implementing the YoungStar which is the rating system in Wisconsin for childcare providers to measure quality in the childcare system. Especially when you talk about family providers because they are the most and then of course group providers but it measures the quality. At this time, Supporting Families Together Association is overseeing the grants that go to the CCR&Rs, which are Childcare Resource & Referral Agencies, and they work directly with the providers to implement this.EDWARDS: In your work with early childhood
development assessments, do the families come to you all or do you find them in the communities?SCHLUETER: Both. Both. Just about an hour ago I got a call from
00:20:00a man that listen to the class I do every Wednesday on the radio and he said, "I finally got your number," and he is more concerned that his child will be. . . he said his child is very well developed and he reads at 4 years of age, and so he wants to make sure that he has the right kind of schooling and resources so that he doesn't stay behind and lose what he has. I had done that directly with families when I was at the Family Resource Center. I was a director in there. We did a lot of this with the families. At this time, I do more trainings for providers. And when somebody asks for one, like this guy that is coming at 3:30 to do this, I'll do it with him too, so we continue in very small ways because 00:21:00it's very important to stay in touch with people one on one, not to lose that [inaudible] in other stuff.EDWARDS: Specifically talking about supporting
families, what positions have you served within the organization and how did you initially get involved?SCHLUETER: I was invited. Two years ago, the executive
director of this organization came to me at the Family Resource Center and she said, "Are you 'stealable?'" And I said, "Depends who wants to steal me." [laughter] So she said, "Okay, we want to do these [inaudible] organization [inaudible] with these kind of experiences and you get to work with the Latino community." And so I came and I look and I like what they're doing and I came here. So that's how I began. And I left the management when I came here because I am doing more. . . My title is, I can't even think of my title right now, it's 00:22:00in my card somewhere. Quality Improvement Specialist. And so I do mostly working directly with the community, involving them, giving them information, doing presentations, being part of committees, bringing our voice into different areas of the county through committees, and those kinds of things. But the part that I like the most is the training.EDWARDS: Nice. You kind of just spoke to it, but
what do you feel like overall is the most important resource that you all offer to families?SCHLUETER: By my life experience, the ability that I have to teach
because I have great respect for the community so I approach the community when I go and share in training. . . [cut] In this way and it's perceived in this way 00:23:00so people are very receptive to my trainings and I think that's what I have to give now is what I know, I can pass it to somebody else. I love to teach. [cut]EDWARDS: Tell us a little bit about your involvement with the Latino Health
Council.SCHLUETER: The Latino Health Council, I was a member of the Latino
Health Council when I was a director of Centro Guadalupe. Silvia and I were co-chairing, she was teaching and I was co-chairing the committee and it was focused specifically on cancer prevention, breast cancer prevention, so we began with this kind of focus and worked with the council to. . . We actually started the first health fair and we did it in the backyard, in the parking lot of Holy 00:24:00[inaudible] Catholic Church and from there it moved to different places and is what is today but at the very beginning it was focused on breast cancer prevention and now it's much more, it has expanded under the new leadership.EDWARDS: And at the time that you worked with the Latino Health Council, as much
of the history as you do know, were there other organizations that were also focusing on Latino health?SCHLUETER: I couldn't say yes or no but, for example,
the sponsoring organization, the American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen, all these organizations were already thinking of Latino prevention otherwise they would not have been supporting us at that time. 00:25:00EDWARDS: From what you saw with
your work with the health council, what were some of those major issues, those epidemics that were occurring in the Latino community in terms of health?SCHLUETER: When you say epidemics I am thinking lack of healthcare and so,
especially with at the beginning of cancer prevention, people don't have the access to medical attention. They won't be able to detect the early stages of cancer so that was one of the pieces that was important because Latino women are in great percentages likely to develop breast cancer so that was one of the reasons why the council began focusing on those pieces.EDWARDS: I know you just
said that you were the co-chair of the council, what was your leadership team? 00:26:00What did that look like size-wise?SCHLUETER: When Silvia and I were doing this,
I can't even think of Silvia's last name, we'll have to figure it out later on. But there was the two of us and then lots of people were coming. We didn't have a full committee, as it's full right now, that's one of the great advances that the council had made. But we had a good group of professionals who were interested in these types of issues so we had 20, 25 people around the table every time we met.EDWARDS: That seems like it's a lot. Was it always a smooth
working with everyone. . . [talking over each other]SCHLUETER: It's not very
smooth road because you have very scarce resources, you have people that are very busy and are trying to do this work. You have issues that are controversial 00:27:00like when we had the first health fair, for example, we had it in the parking lot of a church [inaudible] community where you couldn't distribute any prophylactics and so we had one of the groups that was distributing condoms and the people from the church complained and they asked us, "Could you please go and tell these people you cannot do that?" And we had to go because we had to respect the principles of the host and so one of the reasons that the health fair moved out of church properties and into an area, a place where you could reach out to a diverse community as needed with this type of organization and take everybody's perspective and respect them.EDWARDS: How did you all overcome those barriers such as resource scarcity and
00:28:00other sort of factors that were tribulations to you all as with your work with the council?SCHLUETER: You don't overcome them, you keep on fighting and moving forward and
looking for new resources and new ways to do these and information-finding and reaching out to people whenever it's necessary but there is always going to be more needs than resources. That's a way of life and so yeah, you just continue doing the best you can to meet the needs that you encounter.EDWARDS: Tell us about your involvement and what year you began to be involved
with the Madison Public Libraries Foundation?SCHLUETER: Actually, one of the women in the board of directors, my advisory
board at Centro Guadalupe, was a board member of the Library Foundation and she invited me to the foundation so that's how I began. It's all connections. It all 00:29:00happens because you do outreach, you are a part of this community so people get to know who you are and what you're doing and then say it would be interesting to have your perspective and when they look at me in the community they look at the Latino perspective so in many ways you have to be very conscious that you are not the voice of everybody's opinion because you are not, every person is so very different, but you bring the perspective of the community in the best way that you can and I always think in any type of participation that I do, in different works and committees or what else, is respect. That's respect for the other because I can't say that I will speak for everyone but that's how I came 00:30:00to the library, as an invitation, usually that's what happens. People invite you to lend your knowledge, your perspective, your point of view.EDWARDS: What was it about the foundation that attracted you?
SCHLUETER: Libraries. Libraries are awesome. I think libraries. . . oh my god, I
fell in love with libraries when I was very young. Before I learned to read I was going to libraries in El Salvador and I remember there used to be the little kids, just books that were all ripping apart so that we wouldn't destroy them because in Latin America and El Salvador, we don't have these incredible amount of materials that we have in libraries here so I have always had, and I know it's a resource people could use and it's underutilized and so when I had the opportunity to go and be part of the foundation and we're talking about the new 00:31:00buildings at that time in the library downtown and it was very exciting to talk and to dream of what could happen and we are not going to build a new building but we are going to have a second floor for something else and now I am out but I see the building and I say, "Hm, a little thought of mine is in there, in all those projects."EDWARDS: In what year or what age did you become a member of the board?
SCHLUETER: I was working at Centro Guadalupe so that's got to be around 12 years
ago or something like that.EDWARDS: Very nice, and what was it like working with the board of the library foundation?
SCHLUETER: It's a very powerful group of people. At times I felt kind of
overwhelmed because this is a foundation and the foundations need to attract people who have lots of means and so you are dealing with people who really have 00:32:00lots of power in many cases and lots of wealth so you have to just be careful to not feel. . . don't stay back because you don't have these kind of things but contribute with your knowledge and offer what you have. But it can be overwhelming. These are very powerful group of people.EDWARDS: How was it similar or different than the other boards or councils that
you had previously served in?SCHLUETER: It depends on what they are doing. For example, now I am in the board
of directors of Madison Urban Ministry. Here we fight for the homeless and we fight for whatever rights of the people who are returning from prison so it depends on what the board is doing at this time. I was in the human services board, that's counties, so you take the whole county into your decision-making 00:33:00or advice-making requests that they will make to you. It depends what the board is doing, what the focus is, what they are working for.EDWARDS: Because you've sort of traveled from different council to different
council and I'm sure you stay involved and connected as you've sort of passed the torch, what influences your decisions to move on or take on another initiative in addition to what you're already doing?SCHLUETER: Initiatives. . . I don't know if I can think of initiatives that. . .
I don't know if I can think of one or a couple in particular, there is lots of work that the councils, the different groups, have done. For example, the Latino 00:34:00Support Network, we have just gone through so much in there and continue working with that. When I was in the mental health council, it was all about issues of people who didn't have medical insurance, for example, to access mental health problems, and whatever decisions were made in those years when I was a member, part of my contribution, but I can't think of something specific in particular. I could think of the building of the library but I can't. . .[cut]
. . .things that we have done. Right now with the Madison Urban Ministry, we are
talking about trying to appeal or make sure that the needs of the homeless are heard, for example. But I haven't keep track of that.EDWARDS: What influenced your decision to leave the Madison public libraries
00:35:00board in 2006?SCHLUETER: It's usually the term. Those are terms. 2 or 3-year terms, so when
you finish your time, you are done and they thank you and you move on and they invite other people. It's a very healthy way to do it because you have new minds always on the tasks.EDWARDS: When did you begin your involvement with the Madison Urban Ministry?
SCHLUETER: That was quite a while ago. Probably it was about 2000. I served one
term in Madison Urban Ministry and then I left because I was working with my Masters and then they called me back and said, "Okay, you have to come back. You have to [inaudible]. Come back." I am in my second term so I am serving two more years and then I'll be done, and then I don't have the right to be there again. Only two terms.EDWARDS: A more broader topic, how would you say that you identify yourself?
00:36:00SCHLUETER: I identify. . . as a person? Is that what you. . ? Whenever people
ask, I just say, yeah, I am a Latina, knowing that Latina is a tag, an identification that I never use before I came to the U.S. This is a United States label and there are many of those labels to identify us and I understand the need for statistical purpose or whatever so yeah, I'm very comfortable saying I am Latino, I am Hispanic, whatever you want to call me is fine with me. I am a member of this community. I am a mother, I am many other things also, for which I am very proud. So I identify myself as many things.EDWARDS: What was your first contact with the Chicana identity as per the U.S?
SCHLUETER: As per the U.S., I was very in touch. When I was the director of
00:37:00Centro Guadalupe, I worked with the Chicano studies department at the University, and the director at that time was very involved in the. . . or trying to bring the students to be part of this community that we were [inaudible], but this was in the late 90s, mid-90s, which when you think of the period of time of the Chicano movement, it was way, way late, so by then the Chicano studies department was well established at the University of Wisconsin and my contact was just probably similar to this project that we are making. It's being part of the students' move through the years of school by lending 00:38:00your experience or whatever you are doing, being part of it. But that's the role is almost being the older Latina in there, sharing your experience with the new students. I don't know if I answered your question.EDWARDS: That was perfect. I
would also ask, what was your impression or did you ever struggle with the different identities? So coming here and hearing the term Latina and that label meaning something and Chicana meaning something, was there ever a struggle making that transition?SCHLUETER: It's very interesting. I just have a little
anecdote. The first time I went to get my license through the Department of Transportation, I was in line, my husband was behind me and the person at the counter asked me, "Race." And for my life I couldn't think of race because that 00:39:00is not the way we identify ourselves in Central America so I never laughed more since there, so I told him, "Human," [laughter] and the guy look at me, he didn't smile, he wasn't happy, he was not humored, and my husband said, "You want your license or not? You want your license." So I just look at this guy and he looked at me and put an H in the paper and he told me, "Hispanic." But H, that's for human, too, right?EDWARDS: Nicely done.
SCHLUETER: [inaudible] . .
.anyway you want it. There is always that piece that you have to get used to and you have to live with it. You cannot become bitter for any of these kind of things. I believe in if something is bothering you, do something about it. And you can become anything you want to, so if you can become anything you want to 00:40:00and you are a Latina, there are lots of things you can do to better the community that you are part of and that's what my life has become in Wisconsin because whether it's a small piece or not, whatever I can contribute, I just decided I'm not going to keep it, I'm just going to share it so that's what I have done.EDWARDS: When you came to the United States, what was your exposure
to the Chicana movement if any?SCHLUETER: Yeah, we came to the States in the
early 80s, so the Chicano movement was already kind of quieting down. There was not. . . in that respect for me to say that I was part of the movement, I wasn't, but there was still a lot of work that we needed to do and even now we 00:41:00need to continue doing this because the issues that affect the Latino community are as much like, right now, there are big things at stake right now in the government. So not being part of the Chicano movement in the 60s and 70s hasn't deterred the new groups of people that come, the new Latinos/Hispanics that come into the country to continue the movement toward the. . . to become better, to give what we have, to enrich this culture with our cultures and so in many ways I think I am part of this movement because I experience it in ways that might not have been in the streets doing demonstrations but I did feel the isolation 00:42:00of being a Latina, of being a new mother with three kids in the home, in neighborhoods that were totally white. When I came 30 years ago, we lived in Middleton. Middleton is even now white, then I think I was the only darker-skinned person in many different places, so yeah, and then that forms then what you are and how you relate to people because one of the things we do with our childcare providers, for example, is to realize that this group of people are isolated by the type of work they do. They spend their days working with children and so they don't have time to relate with adults, so they become isolated and I understand. [cut] . . .celebrate that very piece, you know, again 00:43:00at Centro Guadalupe I remember one day a woman, a couple, came to the Center and they sat in my office and they began doing a little bit of conversation like we usually go around in circles before we get to the point we are going to make as a group of people, and finally she said to me, "The reason we are here is because he beats me." And I was just like, oh my god, she has to go home with him. But the thing is, look at this woman and the courage that she had to have to bring her partner and sit him in there and say we are going to fix this once and for all. And this is progress when we are looking at these gender issues that the movement brought up and it's not known that we are still out there and we are still behind and we are going to continue battling it.EDWARDS: What was
your exposure or knowledge, at the time, to things like La Raza and all of those 00:44:00different initiatives that were taking place all over the country?SCHLUETER:
These are movements probably that were kind of on the periphery of my scope because I spent so much time. . . when I came in 1980 I came with one 3-year-old, 8-month-old in my belly and then a third one that came along, so I spent lots of this decade just nurturing my little guys and those movements kind of took second or third place in the importance that I gave to priorities in my life so it was family, family, family, family. Then when I went back into the workforce, I mean, into service for my community, all these pieces keep on coming, so I don't know them directly in person, like you would say, I wasn't in the street clamoring. I did this when I was in school in El Salvador with lots 00:45:00of marches and this kind of thing but then when these things visit the state in this period of time, I was not part of it.EDWARDS: Did you ever feel or witness
any tension between your choice to be a stay-at-home mom and maybe sort of what was being demanded or required of you from your community?SCHLUETER: No, no, I
didn't. But then I was very isolated, too, you have to remember, so I might not have had the chance to live it because I was on my own. I was in my house. I really was isolated. When I look at my life in those years when my kids were growing up, if I wasn't in the school or in the projects my kids were involved, I was nowhere. I was in the kitchen, I was cleaning floors and doing my home stuff. I was being a very traditional homemaker.EDWARDS: What do you consider
to be your most significant contribution to the community throughout all the 00:46:00councils, the boards that you served on? What would you identify as that one mark of you and your work?SCHLUETER: I think it's the willingness to be part of
the community life and to serve the community, to have the desire to learn what the community is about and embrace all the people with respect. To learn to love and respect people because when you provide services to the community, you can provide services with your nose up in the sky and just doing stuff, or you can provide a service when you feel it right in your heart that this is the thing you are doing and you can tell people, listen, I am here because you. And my job is to serve you, and that's a very different perspective and I think regardless of whatever contributions I might have made or programs that I might have been 00:47:00involved in creating, it's the way I bring myself into this community, I am really, really serving this community and I think that's how people know me and that's why people still come to me and still ask questions. And that's for help because they know that if I can do anything, I will do it and I am going to encourage them and recognize that they are, they are the reason and I'm just grateful that I have the privilege to have an education, to have a home, have a family. These are privileges that many people. . . sending money to the kids back home, that's not because they want to do it, that's because life throw this curve to them so we just don't sit comfortable here just thinking that what I did allowed me to be what I am, no, there are life circumstances but then you 00:48:00give something. You give something. So that's why I am more grateful of this recognition that this is not all me.EDWARDS: What would you say you are most
passionate about, or what cause are you currently the most fired about?SCHLUETER: Children, the safety, we are fighting. . . at the heart of everything
that Supporting Families Together does, this is my organization right now that I work with, is to prevent child abuse and neglect and when you are preventing child abuse and neglect, you have to get involved in government, in policy making, in education, in all those conversations that happen at the level of state and federal because to prevent child abuse, you have to strengthen families and to strengthen families you have to bring resources, jobs, education, so it's a series of issues that you bring to the table. So although 00:49:00this is what we want to make sure that the children are growing safe, that there is not abuse, there is not neglect, we have to lay the groundwork for that to actually take place. So I feel passion for that.EDWARDS: As someone who has
been an activist pretty much your entire life, what do you hope to accomplish in the future years?SCHLUETER: I want to make sure, right now, I want to make sure
that all the childcare providers in the state of Wisconsin, especially the home-based childcare providers, most especially the Latino childcare providers, have the recognition that they need as educators for our children and the 00:50:00resources to make it. And I hope to change the governor's decision to reduce the income that is reimbursed to these providers for the care of the most poor of our children because they are taking. . . if you are only to start in the new system, they take 5% of your reimbursement for W-2 and if this happen, our providers who make very little money already as salaries to take care of three or four kids make even less and then we are demanding from them education and we are demanding from them all these other requirements to be licensed and accredited so we are actually having lots of conversations at the state level to say: pay attention to what they are making and discounting them 5% because they 00:51:00are 2 stars and giving them the same amount of reimbursements that you gave them two years ago because they are 3 stars and requiring Masters degrees for 4 stars when they are going to give you some increase? Keeping these people at the level of income right here [gesturing low] when the cost of living is going up here [gesturing high] and demanding that they give a high quality childcare education to our kids? That doesn't work. That's a deadly formula and the governor can see this. The governor can see this, so we are fighting for that one, too. EDWARDS: As someone who went back to school at I guess what is considered to be an unconventional age, what turn. . .SCHLUETER: Nontraditional, they call us.
EDWARDS: Nontraditional age. What turn do you see your work having taken from
00:52:00before you went back to school and then after?SCHLUETER: When I went back to
school, actually my degree from Central America was useless here, because it was in accounting and all the rules and the regulations and the law, everything was different. I mean, accounting, you have to use the laws of the place where you work so I knew it was going to be useless so if I ever wanted to go back to work professionally and you cannot stay down because, well, what if something happened to my husband? How were my kids going to make it and so that was our reason, between my husband and I, so I went back to school. If I hadn't gone back to school I wouldn't be able to do any of the work I am doing. Absolutely nothing. I would not have been able to do work in any of the environments that I work. So I would probably be working at McDonalds or cleaning. You really have to put an effort in education in this society. It's very important. 00:53:00EDWARDS: So
we would characterize a lot of the work that you've done as identifying community problems and then going right in at the head in attacking that problem and forming coalitions in order to build momentum against or about a cause. Would you say anything stands out as being your most memorable feat, your most memorable initiative?SCHLUETER: I love what happened at Centro Guadalupe and
all the programs that I helped to put forward to create at the Center and I was very, very fortunate when I was working at Centro Guadalupe, I had an supervisor, Sister Teresa Ann Wolf, she's a Benedictine sister, and she really encourage and gave me the permission basically to move on with my programs and 00:54:00some of the programs are still in place after all these years but the biggest gift she gave me was that she replicated all the programs that we had done in Wisconsin in Ohio and then later on in South Dakota. [cut]EDWARDS: If you had
to sum up how you work has been in the community and different initiatives that you have been a part of, different causes, if you had to sum all of that up into just a few words about how it has transformed you as a person or your life, what would you say about the lasting impact of your work?SCHLUETER: I think all the
work that I have been able to do in the community has made me grateful. It has put me in touch with so many people that have shown me how difficult it has been 00:55:00in there and they have overcome greatest odds, and so it humbles you, it really humbles you. I mean, the real true sense of the word because you really look at the people who have done and accomplished big things in their lives and it's not usually the ones that are in these high positions here and there. But you learn in the community to look at these families that have made huge decisions, like crossing the border, or opening a business, or raising your child and send him through college or her through college and the kid is finished and they don't owe anything to anyone and it is just amazing, because it put me in touch with 00:56:00these amazing human beings. I am just in awe of the community. I am very grateful that I am even allowed to be part of them and they think that I can teach them something or that they can consult with me and I look at them and I say wow, so it's made me a better person, a grateful person.EDWARDS: And
finally, what advice do you have for the activists of this generation or future generations?SCHLUETER: Get to know the people that you are fighting for. Learn
about the people that you are fighting for. Don't dismiss any of the accomplishments that people do. If you learn about the people, you will grow in respect and in love for them and the fight or the battle that you do is going to 00:57:00come from the heart. It's going to be [inaudible].EDWARDS: We want to thank you
so very much and that is the completion of the interview.SCHLUETER: Thank you.
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