The Olveda Family
AVANCE-San Antonio, 1980
In 1978, Kristina Olveda arrived in San Antonio with her husband and their 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, Christina. New to the city, Kristina didn’t have much of a social circle, but she had a friend who told her about an AVANCE program for children. Interested, Kristina went to the AVANCE office to learn more and registered for PCEP.
PCEP was held in the morning, so Kristina and her daughter attended classes after sending her son to school. Kristina enjoyed seeing her daughter play with the other children in PCEP, and she felt like part of a family. She fondly recalls forming friendships, attending the circus, dressing up with her daughter for the Halloween parade, and seeing the children in their gowns for their PCEP graduation in 1980.
Through PCEP, Kristina also learned how to make healthier meals for her family. She was already a good cook, but the program taught her new and different ways to handle herself in the kitchen, which ultimately helped her get a job at Luby’s, where she worked for 28 years. In 2008, Kristina was honored by AVANCE-San Antonio with the Mother of the Year award for her dedication to her children.
Despite her young age at the time, Christina also remembers playing with the other children in PCEP. She says her experiences at AVANCE influenced her decision to continue her education after high school. Christina pursued her lifelong dream of teaching and now holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. As a teacher, she still feels a sense of kinship whenever a student’s parent mentions they had gone through the AVANCE program.
Part of that connection comes from being an AVANCE mother herself. Christina has a daughter and two sons of her own and participated in PCEP not long after her daughter was born. She remembers telling her mother that she was going to make the happy-sad face pillow and enlisting her help. Strengthening their own bond, Kristina and Christina worked together on educational toys for the newest generation of their family. Today, Christina says that she applies everything she learned through PCEP to help her children and students thrive.