It's a crisp fall afternoon in Washington, DC, and the streets outside the Calvary Bilingual Multicultural Learning Center are teeming with kids just out of nearby middle and high schools, their brightly colored jackets and backpacks striking against the cement and asphalt of the neighborhood's streets and buildings.

Inside, the colors, the shapes of the rooms and gentle curves of the rounded walls surround visitors with warmth. Each room flows into the next—and children roam the halls freely, moving from one activity to another. In one room, kids are painting; in another, playing chess. Upstairs, teens help younger children with computer programs. Nearby, preschoolers play on special "kid-proof" computers with touch screens, listening to the music from the room next door, where very young children dance around, clapping hands and laughing with a volunteer instructor.

The Calvary Bilingual Multicultural Learning Center serves roughly 200 children, from birth to age 18.

The Center's name may sound clunky—those familiar with it tend to call it Calvary or "the Center" or CBMLC—but the deliberate emphasis on bilingualism and multiculturalism is its trademark. The community it serves, a neighborhood known as Columbia Heights, is a historically strong immigrant community; to walk down the streets of Columbia Heights is to be greeted by the sights and sounds of several cultures and languages.

Begun in a church basement in 1986 (but not affiliated with the church), the Center has grown tremendously. Six years ago, executive director Beatriz Otero and Calvary staff convinced Bell Atlantic to donate a vacant phone company building. Individual and corporate donations and foundation grants allowed them to turn the building into a state-of-the-art community center—offering everything from infant care, parenting classes and pre-school programs to art classes, and technology and multimedia training for kids and adults.

"Our goal is clear: to have a place focused on community development where the kids can get what they need where they are, without having to go someplace else," says Otero.

Supporting the Whole Family
Otero and a group of mothers came up with the idea for a center to help parents in the neighborhood. "There was a tremendous need for quality child care in the neighborhood," says Otero. Parents, particularly moms, wanted high-quality care that wouldn't take them out of their way.

But from the start, Calvary was more than a traditional "day care" center. Otero saw a need to focus on emotional and social development. In particular, she says, she and the other mothers—many of whom are still staff members—wanted to help bring kids in the community together.

"We wanted to create an environment where children, primarily African-American and Latino children in that neighborhood could grow up together," she says. "We really need to create vehicles that provide those opportunities for kids because so much in the world around them keeps us separate. And so [we came up with] the idea of a bilingual multicultural learning center."

At the same time, the mothers-turned-activists focused on supporting the whole family. Otero, whose professional background is in education, was herself an immigrant who started public school as a non-English speaker. Her own experiences, she says, gave her a sense of immigrant families' needs, and shaped the formation of the Center.

They set up workshops and trainings to help parents—particularly those with little or no English skills—deal with public school systems, and communicate with teachers and school administrators. They researched city and community resources, and set about referring parents to existing supports.

Celebrating a Diverse Community
From the prints on the walls and the music selections to the books available to the kids, Calvary staff work hard to constantly reinforce the value of multiculturalism and bilingualism. "It's really the content of, for example, an art program that assures that kids are introduced to artists and professionals across cultural groups," says Otero.

As with other activities at Calvary, staff take their cue from the children themselves, looking to them to determine how to intervene and what activities to choose.

"There's a very conscious part of our work that's being really alert to the kinds of issues children raise among themselves that deal with values of gender, race and ethnicity," says Otero. "That's what multicultural education should be—it's not about whether we feed them tacos three times a week and celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanzaa. It's about exposing children to breadth of cultures, and to honoring and challenging the values and thinking that children bring with them."

To create a true multicultural learning environment, Calvary brings staff together by acknowledging and breaking down their own preconceptions. "[We] train staff around these issues, because adults come in with their own set of values—all of us come in with our biases and the fruit of our own upbringing," says Otero.

As Calvary's director of administration, Rosalba Acosta helps ensure that kids have exposure to diverse activities. Acosta came to the United States in 1985, when she was a junior in high school. She spoke almost no English. Calvary, then only two months old, had launched its youth employment program, and Acosta signed on as a teacher's aide. When she finished high school, she took a full-time administrative position.

Acosta has been at Calvary for 14 years. Her two children started in the early childhood program when each was 2 years old. Her daughter, now 4, is in the pre-K classroom. "It's entirely bilingual," says Acosta, "so the classrooms have a native English speaker and a native Spanish-speaking teacher. I'm so happy about that."

Creating and Supporting Leaders
The staff at Calvary are as diverse as the children and families they serve. Most have been there for years. Many started coming to Calvary as kids and decided to stay connected with the Center by becoming staff.

The Center offers flexible training programs to help make this transition happen. From the age of 12 or 13, young people are encouraged to take an active role. There are field trips and training workshops, depending on the kids' needs. Depending on the positions and hours kids put in, they are paid either a stipend or a grown-up wage for their work.

"(Adult) staff have training in dealing with youth, and listening, so this way we get to be their mentors. It can be such a hard age, but here, we reinforce them," says Acosta.

"Calvary really works with all ages, from youth to staff, to make sure that you grow personally," she says. "We're always working around people's schedules and to help [staff] go to school. It's multicultural, so there is a basis of respect that you don't get in many places, and it's in all levels: you see the same treatment and respect for a child as for the executive director."

A Sense of Possibility
What does this emphasis on development and nurturing cultures and community mean for the kids?

The real outcomes, Otero says, are hard to measure. Calvary staff are just now beginning to evaluate the impact of their programming. "So much about what we say about our outcomes is anecdotal," says Otero. " I wish there had been the opportunity over the years to have done a more scientific evaluation of our work. But there are a number of things we know from the kinds of studies that others have done."

First, she says, the Center does provide stability for the families it serves by giving them access to quality, affordable child care. This makes job retention and mobility possible, which is critical to families' well being.

"We know that one of the major contributors to people's ability to stay in a job is the quality of the child care that they're getting. Our families don't have to miss work, which is especially [important] in the kinds of jobs that many of our families have, where job security is not a given," Otero says.

There is growing evidence from teachers and tests, says Otero, that the programs are boosting children's performance in school. The Center has a strong focus on academic support�through tutoring, homework help and even home visits. More than that, kids who come to Calvary are exposed to arts, music and technology in a way that students in inner-city school systems often are not.

"All too often, environments for children, particularly in urban areas and in poor neighborhoods, are not optimum�they are often 'it's better than' rather than 'it's the best that's possible.' [Through TV and media,] our children can see what's possible in the lives of others, but they rarely see the best quality possible in their own lives," says Otero. "That's what drives the way I look at facility and programs�it's showing what's possible."

Caitlin Johnson is staff writer at Connect for Kids.