Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Zoyla Zimmerman-Cruz knows discrimination. She says she's lived with it all her life.
"I ended up being discriminated against," said Zimmerman-Cruz about her journey through her career. "I'm a very aggressive person."
Zimmerman-Cruz, 42, is the new Hispanic outpatient therapist at the Bowen Center in Warsaw. Because of her Hispanic heritage, she is a beneficial addition to the center. Zimmerman-Cruz said no one else at the Bowen Center can speak Spanish and, with the growing Hispanic population in Kosciusko County, the Bowen Center is in great need of someone who can.
"I like the fact that they've the initiative to service Hispanics," said Zimmerman-Cruz. "The language as well as the culture."
Zimmerman-Cruz has been in the United States since 1972 and she said she understands the ability to blend Spanish and American cultures.
As she finishes her master's degree in social work and counseling at Grace College, Zimmerman-Cruz is currently working part-time at the Bowen Center. She was hired Oct. 20, and starting May 2001, she will be full-time.
The first of her family to graduate high school, Zimmerman-Cruz worked at several jobs before attending Manchester College.
She graduated from Manchester College this past May. She also owned the White Hill Manor in Warsaw for two years and was ESL (English as a second language) director at Wawasee High School for three years.
"I'm also focusing on getting a Ph.D," said Zimmerman-Cruz.
At the Bowen Center, Zimmerman-Cruz deals with most of the Hispanic patients who come in. She also helps with recruiting for other Hispanic counselors.
Hispanics, Zimmerman-Cruz said, "don't understand the importance of counseling." She said there are two problems: Hispanics are usually not aware of it and they usually can't afford it anyway. Her goal is to educate them so they know if they are not functioning 100 percent in their lives, everything else will suffer.
"(Counseling) is so foreign to people," she said. She believes counseling is a way to make things clearer in life and give the patient an opportunity to get a different perspective from a totally objective individual.
Zimmerman-Cruz is trained in all areas of counseling except child therapy. This includes drug abuse, sexual abuse, marriage counseling and group counseling. She also is a qualified translator for any other counselor.
Another of Zimmerman-Cruz's projects is to develop diversity workshops. These workshops deal with culture mediation and conflict resolution. Zimmerman-Cruz said the diversity workshop training manual was specifically written by a Caucasian and a minority and requires the workshop to be taught by a Caucasian and a minority. There is lots of interaction so the people in the workshops can get to know each other, she said.
"It's a hands-on workshop," said Zimmerman-Cruz. "People own it. They actually own the workshop themselves."
The fact that Spanish was her first language and she didn't speak English until she was 14 causes a connection between Zimmerman-Cruz and her clients. She believes it's very important for Hispanics to hang on to their culture even as they learn a new one.
The Hispanic population in the Kosciusko County area tripled in the last four or five years, she said. That growth, she said, created a lot of problems for business and industry, who are missing out on the Hispanic market because many of them don't have Spanish- speaking employees.
"The difference in the culture has to be bridged," said Zimmerman-Cruz.
