Sponsor Spotlight: Adela Trujillo with CAASNM
Sponsor of At-Risk Afterschool, Child Care Centers, and Family Child Care Homes
May 27, 2026
Adela Trujillo is the CACFP Director for Community Action Agency of Southern New Mexico (CAASNM). CAASNM provides various services to support their community, such as a children’s entrepreneurship program, home visiting, family empowerment, and advocacy training. In addition, CAASNM operates as a CACFP sponsoring organization for over 460 family child care homes, 80 child care centers and 2 At-Risk afterschool sites that serve nutritious meals to 11,000 children.
CAASNM sponsors providers across southern New Mexico but has also expanded to Albuquerque. In 2022, New Mexico lost a sponsoring organization that covered the area surrounding Albuquerque. Seeing that those providers were at risk of losing access to the program, Adela hired two of the staff who were working for the sponsoring organization in Albuquerque in order to onboard and oversee those providers.
Under Adela’s leadership, CAASNM has also expanded its sponsorship into the child care center space. When Adela joined CAASNM 30 years ago, the organization was only sponsoring family child care homes and over the years, they slowly saw the number of homes they sponsored decline (not unlike the nationwide trend of family home decline). In an effort to maintain their CACFP staff, and in response to a nudge from their State agency, CAASNM began sponsoring child care centers in 2016. Adela had also received many phone calls from child care centers interested in participating in the CACFP and knew there was a need for CAASNM to open its doors to those programs as well.
Because of Adela’s continuous efforts to increase access to the CACFP, CAASNM has grown to be the largest sponsoring organization in New Mexico. Adela attributes much of their success to her team’s dedication to the program and the high level of customer service they provide.
"We don’t just help with the food program. We go above and beyond to help providers with any questions they may have. We answer various questions, such as where to get taxes done or how to help with transportation. We keep track of all the other programs that are available in our community. We don’t say ‘that’s not our job, that’s not what we do.’ If it isn’t our organization that has these services, we find who they can talk to.”
Adela’s team also provides multiple opportunities for training and technical assistance to ensure that their providers are successful in the program. Each year, Adela hosts three conferences for their providers to get training on CACFP, as well as additional topics that are helpful for child care providers.
“Our providers do not lack in training. I do three conferences where the providers come and get their CACFP and additional training. We want to make sure that a lack of training is not the thing that keeps them from staying in the program.”
The love for the program is something that Adela tries to instill in her team and is something that she looks for when hiring new staff. Adela’s team is recognized within CAASNM as having the lowest turnover of staff and Adela attributes this to her love for her staff and their joy in supporting this program.
Passion for the mission is also something Adela thinks is key for all sponsoring organizations and anyone looking to enter into this work. It is important for sponsors and their staff not to lose sight of the program’s purpose: to nourish children and support providers in doing so.
“Kids get nutritious meals and they learn better when they have full stomachs. The providers, a lot of them are going to watch these kids regardless, so we might as well give them money to feed them.”
In Southern New Mexico, Adela has been with CAASNM for 30 years.