As it heads to the Board of Supervisors to request additional funds, here’s how the VIDA Project has impacted people’s lives.

Celia Jiménez here, still fascinated by the way the VIDA Project started: with people from different parts of Monterey County sharing stories about the obstacles and struggles they were facing during the pandemic. These stories piled up and highlighted the lack of resources that minorities, Spanish and Indigenous speakers, farmworkers and many others were faced with in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

COPA, Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action, saw the need and proposed a community health worker program that later on became known as VIDA. It’s a program through which neighbors, students and farm workers reach out to people outside of churches, schools and grocery stores, or go door-to-door, informing thousands of residents across Monterey County about resources available to help them medically, financially and socially through Covid-19. That includes signing people up to get vaccinated, administering rapid tests and providing resources to those who test positive (a place to isolate, for example) or directing people to apply for rent and food assistance. 

VIDA is a chameleon-like program that adapted to the ever-changing pandemic and provided information in English, Spanish and Indigenous languages. It has been extremely successful—it has registered more than 4,600 vaccination appointments and administered over 13,000 rapid tests. The work of VIDA staffers also contributed to a 100-percent vaccination rate in the East Salinas zip code 93905, one of the areas most impacted by Covid. (According to data from the Monterey County Health Department, 100 percent of residents aged 5 and older in that zip code have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.) 

These numbers alone are impressive, but it’s also important to see how VIDA has positively impacted people’s lives. 

Among the people who have received help through VIDA’s community health workers is Jovita Aguilar, a Mixteco woman and farmworker from Salinas. She got information in Spanish first and then in Mixteco (when VIDA worker Claudia Reyes noticed Aguilar needed further assistance) about vaccines, tests and financial help. Aguilar and part of her family, including her husband and a daughter, tested positive for Covid-19 in December. They couldn’t go to work but thanks to VIDA, they received benefits to buy food, get tested and isolate to prevent infecting her other kids. 

Another is Jose Anaya, a single dad of three kids and Castroville resident. He says that when he tested positive for Covid it felt like “getting a bucket of cold water,” because he’s the only one who takes care of his kids and he thought he would have to go work despite being sick. “During this time [winter] I’m not working a lot,” Anaya says, adding he felt more stressed after seeing a paper outside his door reminding tenants to pay their rent on time. “I couldn't leave my kids without a home.” After getting in touch with VIDA, Anaya got $1,000 toward his rent and was able to get Covid tests for his kids so that they could return to school. 

Tomorrow, COPA will go before the Board of Supervisors to request $1.5 million in additional funds to continue the VIDA program with a full staff of 48 until the end of the year. It needs four votes to pass. COPA and the other organizations behind VIDA want to be prepared in case cases rise during the peak of the harvesting season or next winter. The county’s previously allocated funds for VIDA will expire by the end of the month; without the county boost, it will continue at a smaller capacity for the next two years (instead of 48 full-time community health workers, it will downsize to 18). 

VIDA has done a great job helping residents who need resources the most and reaching out to communities that normally don’t have easy access to services. The request for additional funds will be discussed tomorrow, March 8 after 1:30pm—you can tune in virtually, or attend in person, to show your support for the program. 

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How the VIDA Project has impacted people’s lives. Carmel struggles with a staffing shortage.