Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series. 
 
As the Latinx community in Calhoun County continues to expand, the organization which provides programs and services for these residents is positioning itself to grow to meet the needs of those it serves.
 
On July 31, that organization — VOCES — officially became the new owners of a 20,000-square-foot building at 1346 W. Columbia Avenue which is four times the size of VOCES’ original headquarters at 520 W. Michigan Avenue.
 
“Bringing our services under one roof is a big reason for this move,” says Jose Orozco, who serves as Co-Executive Director, alongside his wife, Belinda. “During COVID when we weren’t able to respond to the needs of our community, do food distribution or COVID testing, we had to lean into our community partners.”
 
As VOCES, like many local organizations, was doing the best it could under the circumstances, the City of Battle Creek and the County received a combined total of $56.5 million in ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act funding.
 
Orozco says he applied for a portion of these ARPA funds thinking it was “a longshot” and was both surprised and grateful when VOCES received $1 million. Those funds were used to purchase the Columbia Avenue building which was built in 1968 and to cover some of the necessary renovation costs. Orozco says VOCES will be protective of the existing tenants’ contracts at the Lighthouse Professional Center, the building’s current name, while starting to plan for and expand its programming and services to position the organization to have a much bigger presence in the City and the County.
 
“We have visions and wants as far as growing our departments. If the funding is not there, we’re going to have to take our time. We already know that we’ve got to put a new roof on. Our goal is to have that building set for the next 100 years. We’re going to model investing in generational wealth.”
 
Jose Orozco, who serves as VOCES Co-Executive Director, alongside his wife, Belinda, at the new Nuestra Casa building.When VOCES (which means voices in Spanish) takes ownership, it will be renamed “Nuestra Casa” which means new home “because we are a community and this will be a home for every family who enters,” Orozco says.
 
There are currently 7,270 Hispanic residents in Calhoun County. They represent 5.43 percent of the county’s total population of 134,000, according to the website Data USA. By 2060, the Latinx community in the United States is projected to be among the largest if not the largest sector of the total ethnic population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. These projections are expected to impact the ethnic makeup in Calhoun County.
 
Oftentimes, Orozco says, an individual will follow a cousin or friend who settled here and invites them to spend time here and they find a job and decide to make a permanent move.
 
“With a couple of the larger families in town, it just starts with one or two family members settling here and it just grows from there,” he says.
 
Given these scenarios, VOCES’ West Michigan Avenue location could not adequately accommodate the uptick in service delivery and programming for this growing sector of the population much less convene community meetings which often had to be conducted outside of the building.
 
“We needed more physical space,” he says. “The building will be an asset for VOCES. Oftentimes, we talk about making nonprofits sustainable, by making this move, if we do nothing else and not grow VOCES and keep programming as it is VOCES would be sustainable. In the long run, it doesn’t give us everything we want, we would love some greenspace and courtyard space. It doesn’t give us everything we want but it gives us a lot more.”
 
What takes place inside that building will be an asset for the County’s Latinx community, those who have been here for generations, and immigrants new to the area.
 
“We’ve got to be prepared to meet them where they’re at and then provide the best supports and resources that we can,” Orozco says.
 
VOCES’ three major areas of focus include Community Connections, Education, and Language Services. These areas offer services including ENL (English as a New Language) for adults; assistance with filling out paperwork to receive Medicare, Medicaid, or other benefit assistance; and interpretation and translation services.
 
“It ranges from getting their kids registered at a local school to having them understand a letter in English that they received to taking ESL (English as a Second Language) classes to transportation to appointments to finding a mental health therapist for their kids,” Orozco says.
 
This current lineup will be expanded within the next month or two to include an Immigration Services Department which will be under the purview of Belinda Orozco, an Immigration Attorney.
 
“We are going to co-lead VOCES. She will help me lead VOCES and she will launch the immigration services,” Orozco says. “We have an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Detention Center in Calhoun County, but we don’t have one nonprofit immigration attorney. That’s huge for us especially when we’re working with members of our community with housing issues or supporting vital needs.”
 
These needs include assisting with the renewals of visas and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and applications for citizenship. This work is currently being handled by four different entities in Kalamazoo County which is not the ideal scenario, Orozco says. In June and again in July, a mobile Mexican Consulate traveled to Battle Creek to assist people so they didn’t have to travel to the actual Consulate in Detroit or organizations in Kalamazoo. One of the families seeking assistance traveled from Minnesota.
 
Big plans for a small building
 
As work on the new headquarters proceeds, VOCES’ West Michigan Avenue building will become a bilingual, intercultural preschool for children in the LatinX community as well as those who identify as members of other races and ethnicities. The school’s focus will be on three and four-year-olds using a neighborhood model of service delivery.
 
The full-day pre-school, which will be called La Escuelita (The Schoolhouse in English) will have space for 16 three-year-olds and 16 four-year-olds with everything in English and Spanish. There will be one teacher and one assistant per classroom.
 
Realtor Mark Haddock (left) and Jose Orozco (right), Co-Exec. Dir. of VOCES, in front of VOCES' new home, Nuestra Casa.“We want to keep it small and family-centered,” Orozco says. “That family piece is very important to us.”
 
Foods native to the Hispanic culture will be cooked and served family-style to students to support VOCES’ family-centered approach. There also will be opportunities for parents to access resources for employment, ESL classes, food, and transportation.
 
The preschool was more of a wish that the VOCES’ Board and leadership wanted to make a reality after parents new to the community were looking for childcare while they worked. Staff members directed these parents to DHHS (Department of Health and Human Services) which was able to find open childcare slots for their children, but Orozco says that this wasn’t the best option for these families because it was like “we were putting our most valuable possessions in a room where we didn’t feel like we belonged. It was just enough.”
 
“We are leaning into a holistic approach to support our families while making this a culturally relevant experience for our kids,” Orozco says.
 
VOCES received financial and technical assistance from the city for both buildings. The city’s DDA (Downtown Development Authority) is the landlord of the West Michigan Avenue site and the city is the DDA’s administrator.
 
“The DDA gave them a grant for about $15,000,” says John Hart, the city’s Small Business Development Director who is involved with the DDA. 

VOCES also received $100,000 from the County for work on both buildings.
 
Jose Orozco (right), Co-Exec. Dir. of VOCESWhen VOCES decided to relocate to the Columbia Avenue building, Hart says, the DDA helped them with soft-cost pre-development work that included environmental studies. This investment makes sense because of the services VOCES provides to the community that include the annual communitywide Cinco de Mayo celebration and translation and interpretation.
 
“Our work with VOCES is directly tied to their community work for and with us,” Hart says. As an example, Hart cites an ESL program offered at Snackwerks for their employees that is funded through a grant from the SBDC.
 
“That’s another direct involvement between the city and VOCES,” Hart says.
 
Orozco says he is grateful for these and other relationships that spread to include local churches like First Congregational Church which has been providing a space since March for VOCES to continue to operate as construction began on their old building and they were finalizing details for the purchase of the new building.
 
“We’re beyond thankful to FCC for welcoming us in when we needed it. We were looking at options and different spaces and FCC welcomed us with open arms,” he says.
 
At the communitywide level, Orozco says he felt this welcoming attitude when he became VOCES’ executive director in February 2020.
 
“Three weeks after I started COVID hit. Imagine being the new kid in town and figuring out how I’m supposed to develop relationships on the phone and over Zoom while at the same time leveraging resources for some of the most vulnerable in our community,” he says. “Because other leaders in Battle Creek and Calhoun County stepped forward to support me and work with me, I was able to form lasting connections that continue to help VOCES move forward and grow.”