Belisa M. Urbina
Written by Shala Hainer
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Urbina is also the cultural and linguistic advisor for Wraparound Initiative of Northwest Georgia, which provides support to youth that are at risk of out-of-home placement and their families. She is a member of Cobb County’s Mobilizing For Action Through Planning and Partnerships steering committee, the REACHES Advisory Council and Kennestone’s Hospital Regional board of directors.
Urbina, who has been married to her husband Miguel for almost 27 years, is the proud mother of five children and grandmother of a beautiful baby girl.
Womenetics: You have lived through many of the experiences you try to help your clients through, such as struggling to complete your education as a young mother with two small children at home. How does your personal experience help you relate to your clients?
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Womenetics: What has been your biggest success story among the women or families you've helped through Renovacion Conyugal?
Urbina: We have so many success stories that it is hard to pick only one. I always think about those families in which we had an impact with several of the family members. We have a family in which the mom had been a victim of severe violence at her parents’ home and was very violent with her children. Her kids were depressed and both had attempted suicide. The kids attended our youth workshop while they were in therapy. They also attended the support groups and started volunteering for the program. They registered their parents for the couples’ workshop and they attended.
Through her personal journey, the mom realized how her life experiences had shaped her into an angry person so prone to violence. I was fortunate to facilitate that first conversation in which she explained to the kids about her past, and why she behaved the way she did. She was able to tell them how much she loved them, and how sorry she was that she had mistreated them. It was a moment I will never forget. Talk about outcomes! Mom and the whole family have gone through so many positive changes. They were even featured in a news article that won a local Latino reporter an important national award.
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Womenetics: What motivated you and your husband to take action when you saw the need for support for the Latino residents of Georgia?
Urbina: Renovacion Conyugal started as a personal quest. We had volunteered for a similar program back in Puerto Rico, and we missed all the good things that it provided our relationship. My husband and I had gone through a deep crisis in our marriage, and the program helped us rebuild our relationship. We wanted to continue that work more for our own benefit than for the benefit of others. When we tried to look for such a program that would take into account our Latino culture, we found that there wasn’t any.
We started our couples’ program using the same ideas and skills that we had learned and that we were trying to implement in our relationship. From the beginning, it was a huge success. By the following year our parenting program had started, and we have been adding programs and growing to meet new demands constantly. To this date we have a huge passion for what we do, and it is still a very personal quest that makes us better people and a stronger family.
In my book, Renovacion Conyugal has to make sense and help us and our volunteers first. Only then we will be equipped to effectively help others.
Womenetics: What was your original goal when moving from Puerto Rico to the United States? How quickly did your plans change?
Urbina: We moved to Georgia because we wanted to achieve a better quality of life for our growing family. We had three children under the age of four and two teens. We wanted a quiet and safe place to raise our family, and we found it in Paulding County.
Our plans changed during that first year here [in 1999] as we tried to find a couples’ program to volunteer with. By October 2000, we were already planning that first couples’ workshop with three other friends. Little did we know that this passion would completely change our family and our whole lives.
Womenetics: What do you see as the most important workshop that Renovacion Conyugal provides, and why?
Urbina: I think that they are all so different and relevant. I am very partial to our couples’ program because it was the program that got us into doing what we do.
I am also absolutely in love with our youth program (Renovacion Juvenil). We have seen these kids grow and develop into amazing, strong leaders. That makes me feel very proud. I admire them deeply.
Sadly, in our Latino community there are many kids making decisions that will negatively affect their future in many ways. They can’t find someone to support them and feel that society is hostile toward them. The process of acculturating to a new environment, while also retaining their original cultural traits is a very difficult process, and all of them go through it. I am happy that we are able to provide that support. Seeing our young volunteers doing so many amazing things gives me hope that there are many others like them. These kids have all the potential to be an important positive force in our communities.
Womenetics: What is the next step for Renovacion Conyugal's growth?
Urbina: We just got certified to teach a nationally recognized curriculum called “Strengthening Families” that is targeted to kids ages 10 to 14 and their parents. We want to expand our community education area, including our cultural and linguistic proficiency effort.
The needs of our Latino community are many, and there are not enough services for them. We have to empower other providers using the knowledge that we have and continue building relationships and working partnerships. We think of ourselves as great team players. I particularly love connecting people to one another and seeing the great things that these connections achieve.
For many years our organization has been a very well kept secret. We want to change that. We want to let others know about our work. One of our immediate goals is to expand and strengthen our board of directors and advisory council. This will help us support the tremendous growth that the organization is experiencing.
Womenetics: You serve a large number of people with a shoestring staff. How are you able to make such an impact with so few staff members?
Urbina: Our secret is an amazing group of committed volunteers. Together they donated more than 15,000 hours a year to our organization. That is amazing! People feel that since the program helped them and their families, they want to offer it to others. They also stay connected to us to keep growing and strengthening their families. We also create great friends that have many common views and goals and that feels great.
Read about other women making a difference through nonprofits:
Being busy's no excuse, thanks to Margot Pritzker's innovative WomenOnCall – an organization lending flexibility to volunteering.
Armed with her tenacious spirit and a lot of coffee, Alicia Phillip has grown The Community Foundation to be one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the country.
2011 POW! Award winner Kathy Colbenson has empowered at-risk youth by providing the resources they need to succeed for the past 25 years.
Based near Atlanta, Shala Hainer has been writing and copyediting since 1995. Beginning her career at newspapers such as the Marietta Daily Journal and the Atlanta Business Chronicle, she most recently wrote and edited articles for several nonprofit organizations before purchasing a flower shop in 2006. She earned a bachelor’s in communications from Jacksonville State University.
