Vivid Life Home Care

Rooted in purpose

Vivid Life Home Care’s story is very much intertwined with the journey of one of its founders, Aquilina Soriano Versoza, known as Aqui to her friends. A former child actress, seen in national commercials, television shows, and films like Troop Beverly Hills, her life began to take a very different path in college. While at UCLA, she became aware of injustice and inequity in the world around her, and began to challenge the status quo.

But the real turning point was a year she spent in the Philippines learning about her heritage. There, Aqui began to absorb the culture and traditions of Filipinos. On a trip to Hong Kong, where there are many Filipino domestic workers, she connected with organizations and social movements working to make conditions better. 

And she took what she learned back to California with her. 

When back in Los Angeles, Aqui realized that many Filipinos in California work low-wage jobs in unjust conditions. Even those in home care, for whom care for the elderly is part of their culture and community values, are not treated well by their employers. Wage theft, lack of time off, and job insecurity are rampant. Because many workers face language and other barriers, they are vulnerable to exploitation.

That’s why, in 1997, she helped found the Pilipino Worker’s Center (PWC). For 27 years, PWC has been dedicated to securing better living and working conditions for the Filipino community.

Finding solid ground and building partnerships

Under Aqui’s leadership as Executive Director, PWC has made great strides legally and culturally to uphold the dignity, safety, and economic stability of Filipinos in California.

It started with organizing home caregivers and addressing their working conditions. But PWC realized that even after caregivers were able to recover stolen wages, it was difficult for them to find jobs with better conditions. For PWC members, poor working conditions for those in home care comes down to an undervaluing of care itself.

Care is an essential infrastructure that makes it possible for our communities to function. But it is often unseen and taken for granted because we as a society have relied on the work being done as unpaid or low-paid labor. Home care is not always recognized for the challenging work that it is. It is often physically demanding and always emotionally demanding where skill and experience makes a real difference in quality of life for both those receiving care and those providing it.

That’s why PWC made highlighting the value of care and caregivers a key priority. In 2006 and 2007, the organization became a founding member of two other influential nonprofits making conditions better for workers: the California Domestic Workers Coalition (CDWC) and the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). As a part of these coalitions, PWC was able to further amplify the state of care for seniors and people with disabilities, as well as the plight of home caregivers.

But Aqui and team didn’t stop there. As the 2000s came to a close, she began to learn about a new strategy for creating better working conditions for domestic workers: cooperatives. This new cooperative model would open new possibilities for PWC and for home caregivers.

Making the home care cooperative model viable

PWC is an organization made up largely of caregivers. In the 2010s, as the organization became better known in the community, they started to receive requests for referrals. But, without some kind of proper structure in place, they weren’t able to guarantee that these jobs would meet their standards. There needed to be a way to ensure good conditions for the caregivers being referred.

And Aqui and PWC didn’t just want to fight what was wrong; they wanted to build the model of what they thought possible in the home care industry. That’s why Aqui and worker leaders of PWC started a program within PWC called Courage Homecare. Under this new model, the caregivers are also the business owners. They have a stake in the success of the business, they share in the profits, and they benefit from training and support.

Courage has transformed the lives of its members and their clients alike. Caregivers are invested in the care they provide and the types of relationships that are formed, which, in turn, helps foster trust with their clients. The caregivers create the better conditions, because their voices and needs are at the center of the business. They form the leadership that creates those conditions, mitigating power dynamics and empowering them to access their rights. They can build care that makes sense for them and for those they serve.

Courage Homecare quickly caught on and soon became its own licensed entity, separate from PWC. But Courage Homecare as a small, stand-alone cooperative faced many challenges that prevented it from growing larger and becoming more financially successful. Courage needed the ongoing support of PWC to be viable in its then-current form.

So, Aqui and her colleagues needed a way to scale the model they’d found. That’s where connections with NDWA, CDWC, ICA Group, and the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) proved invaluable. By combining the cooperative business development support provided by ICA Group, CDWC's connections with worker centers across California, DAWI's model for partnering with community-based organizations to incubate LLC worker cooperatives, and portable benefits experiments with NDWA, the team had identified a path forward. Now, the pieces were in place to overcome barriers and ensure that home caregivers could reap the benefits of the rights they’d fought so hard for.

Vivid Life Home Care was ready to be formed.

The Vivid Life home care model leads the way

In 2020, PWC and other groups advocated for the establishment of a seed fund through the State of California, with part of the fund dedicated to cooperative business development. With those funds, Aqui worked with DAWI and the LA Co-op Lab to apply the Rapid Response Cooperative model, which helps to systematize the governance and structure of an LLC cooperative model, to Courage Homecare. Within a year, Courage became profitable.

A short time later, another trip would further change the team’s approach to home care. In 2022, Aqui traveled to Germany as part of the MIT Mel King Fellows Program to meet with Domino World, an organization pioneering an innovative approach to care that emphasizes understanding the resilience of our bodies and how we can continue to improve the quality of our lives as we age. This approach became central to Vivid Life Home Care’s own philosophy of care.

In 2023, the time was right. Aqui brought together five organizations who had been pivotal in Courage’s successful transition to viability – PWC, DAWI, ICA Group, NDWA, and CDWC – to found Vivid Life Home Care. Together, these founding members have built a new cooperative model for home caregivers across California. With locations in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and others in process of being formed, Vivid Life Home Care is leading the way for caregivers and clients who are eager for care that elevates everyone involved.

And the story isn’t done. Today, Aqui and the other home care industry experts continue to push for culture change in the domestic care industry. That mission is informing the work at PWC and Vivid Life Home Care. And Aqui has even gone back to Hollywood, this time as an advocate for ensuring that domestic caregivers are valued and respected.