The Healing Art of a Supported Food System
As I handed the little girl the carton of eggs and complimented her colorful dress, she and her mom looked at each other in awe.
“¡Son de los buenos!” (“They’re the good kind!”) That day, the food pantry hosted by ALAS, a Half Moon Bay–based nonprofit supporting farmworkers and Latino families, was distributing organic, pasture-raised eggs. The kind that include a small note introducing the hens that laid the eggs.
As I hung up my volunteer vest that day, their smiles stuck with me. ALAS is short for Ayudando Latinos a Soñar in Spanish, which translates to “Helping Latinos Dream.” The fitting acronym means “wings” in Spanish. Later that week, I saw the same girl skipping into ALAS’s unmissable yellow home in town in an even more elaborate dress, likely on her way to her dance class.
FROM DANCING TO HEALING
What started as an organization offering folk dance lessons for kids has blossomed into an important California nonprofit. Their secret to transformational community healing? The simple joys of life: dance, music and art.
“Once we realized the need to connect our youth to their cultures, the organization basically brought itself to life,” said Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga, ALAS’s founder and chief executive officer, who launched the nonprofit in 2011.
Hernandez-Arriaga began working in Silicon Valley as a social worker. She recounts the moment she awakened to how much farmworker families long to connect to their cultures and each other. For years, she worked with a girl who had stomach pains that no medical test could explain. After years searching for the root cause, the girl finally revealed to Hernandez-Arriaga what was behind the hurt, captured in a drawing: the weight of being part of a family with mixed immigration status.
A local food
system can’t flourish if its
farmworkers and their families
aren’t thriving too.
That’s when the harsh truth landed for Hernandez- Arriaga that propelled her toward her life’s work. A local food system can’t flourish if its farmworkers and their families aren’t thriving too.
“From there, as the need grew,” she says. “We started our arts programs of mariachi, ballet folklórico and summer camps, and realized that parents did not leave at dropoff, they stayed to be together and began building community.”
That’s when ALAS expanded to offer mental health support groups for parents as well as food distribution and legal aid.
LA CULTURA CURA
Hernandez-Arriaga empathized with the grief that comes from feeling like losing a colorful part of oneself. She remembers growing up in Texas and longing for the warm, colorful culture of her family in Mexico and Panama. That’s why ALAS’s mantra is la cultura cura: “Culture heals.”
“Sometimes it just takes a safe space where you can share parts of yourself that feel hidden,” she says. “It makes all the difference in accessing your full potential. Whether that’s to be a farmworker, artist, mariachi musician or a social worker. Connecting with our culture makes it easier to breathe life into our families and our work. For many people we serve, that means bringing that vibrancy to harvesting the fields.”
Walk into ALAS’s offices today and you’ll see color pops of magenta, lime greens and glittering purples in paintings, papel picado (colorful hanging flags), and lively papier-mâchĂ© floats for DĂa de los Muertos parades.
“Once we started helping people through art, we saw powerful changes,” explains Hernandez-Arriaga. “As people felt their culture reflected in their town, they came to life.”
“I used to just go from home to work and
back again before I discovered ALAS. Now,
I look forward to going with my husband
and kids to their art classes. Creating art as a
family alongside other families is beautiful.
It makes me feel so connected.”
—Arcelia Hernandez
ALAS has become a lifeline for Latino families in the tight-knit agricultural community in the heart of Silicon Valley. They have helped the community navigate hardships from a pandemic to a tragic local shooting at a farm.
PLANTING SEEDS OF HOPE
“It wasn’t until a heartbreaking shooting happened at my workplace that I got connected to ALAS,” says Arcelia Hernandez.
She is one of many farmworkers who began accessing ALAS’s support services after the tragedy at a local mushroom farm in 2023, where seven people were killed. After ALAS brought their mobile food pantry to the job site, she signed up for a support group and enrolled her kids in their classes and camps.
“I used to just go from home to work and back again before I discovered ALAS,” says Hernandez. “Now, I look forward to going with my husband and kids to their art classes. Creating art as a family alongside other families is beautiful. It makes me feel so connected.”
STRONGER WINGS, HEALTHIER COMMUNITIES
The next time I visited ALAS’ food pantry, I watched as Hernandez- Arriaga greeted every volunteer, staff
member and visitor with a big hug and a contagious smile. People naturally slowed their pace, watching her interactions with admiration. You know a hometown hero when you see one.
She got on a loudspeaker, thanking the many volunteers who showed up that day to distribute food. She pointed them to the local coffee cart that made a surprise appearance to donate drinks to the volunteers and families who came to gather their weekly produce.
“The thread that holds this all together is the people who show up, day in and day out. Not just at ALAS, but in the fields harvesting our food. Feeding California and our nation is an all-hands-on deck job, and it starts right here at community gatherings like this,” says Hernandez-Arriaga.
As ALAS’s services have expanded, so has the community 32 SPRING 2026 it serves. Beyond serving youth and parents, the nonprofit has launched Corazenes de Oro (“Hearts of Gold”), a group for older adults that offers art activities, nutrition classes and just a good ol’ time.
Hernandez-Arriaga says, “We’re helping families throughout their entire lifespan. When people donate their time, talents or resources, the impact is immediate.”
In an age where many are hungry for community, this small but mighty nonprofit is harvesting hope and changing lives—one set of colorful wings at a time.
