About EL NIDO FAMILY CENTERS
(Los Angeles, CA)—Los Angeles of 2008 is a very different city than LA in the 1920s. Or in the 1950s. Times change. The problems people face change. But for over 80 years, Los Angeles has been able to turn to a special organization for help. El Nido Family Centers has been a constant guiding and giving presence in Los Angeles, all the while changing, responding and offering solutions to the pressures and problems of the day. Since its birth in the 1920s, El Nido Family Centers has helped families deal with the challenges and problems they face, giving them the support and skills they need to succeed. El Nido—“the nest” in Spanish—has helped LA\'s kids become responsible, productive, educated, healthy adults, and has provided adults with the guidance and resources they need to help their kids flourish. Like Los Angeles, El Nido has been reborn and reinvented for every generation, addressing some of the toughest problems facing each generation: working to prevent disease; prevention and intervention of child abuse and neglect, teen pregnancy and delinquency; and fostering parenting skills and literacy. El Nido was born in 1925 when a group of volunteers, the National Council of Jewish Women, created a counseling service in Los Angeles for girls. Believing that “a child cannot grow up twice” and that every child deserves health and happiness, they built a camp in Laurel Canyon for “underprivileged and pre-tubercular” girls, to offer them fresh air, good food and fun. Success was measured in pounds gained.