Center for Bilingual Development and Social Enterprise (CDBES)

CDBES is La Mujer Obrera’s educational program to build the vocational, basic, entrepreneurial, technological and leadership skills of low-income women workers and their families. La Mujer Obrera established CDBES to balance the demands of creating a community economic development process that is rooted in the needs of Mexican immigrant women workers. The challenge in this process is how to create access to economic alternatives while ensuring that this "access" is not achieved at the cost of leaving behind the women who have given it birth. Spanish-speaking low-income women workers must remain at the core of the development process and continue to make decisions, learn, evolve, design, and participate in programs.
This required the formulation of a structured educational process, so that women can gain the skills necessary to integrate into the formal economic sector as well as engage the political system.
For these reasons CDBES combines:

• Bilingual Workforce Development programs to provide opportunities for women to build their skills through programs that integrate learning in language, literacy, basic skills, technology and occupational areas.

• Entrepreneurial Training to prepare women to plan, establish, operate and grow social purpose businesses and micro-enterprises, as market-based strategies for achieving economic justice

• Leadership Development programs to build the capacity and experience of Spanish-speaking low-income women workers in the diverse skills and critical analysis they need to participate in defense of their rights and dignity.