These are our current six community development projects:

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1. Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration from September 15 to October 15, each year. This national event/activity has not been widely celebrated in Cameron County, Texas. The main thrust of this endeavor is to educate the public on the history, heritage, and contributions of the Hispanic community in the United States.

2. La Quinceañera Program/The Q-Ball, a nine-month leadership training program (Saturdays only) for young girls ages 14-15. The training will be centered around three-month cycles with focus on these three questions with answers: How does the World Work? How do I Make the World Work for Me?  How do I Make the World? Successful participants will receive a traditional cultural evening celebration to be held in July each year as their graduation present.

3. New System Enterprise, an experimental project involving cooperative corporate structures to alleviate poverty, hunger, and teach creating wealth skills. First steps are to form an organic, animal feed, cooperative in collaboration with the Brownsville airport authority. We will cut, bale, and grind their grass, brush, cactus, and trees into edible, organic, animal feed. We already have a market for this product. Next, we will simultaneously initiate a gasoline supply cooperative to fuel vehicles used in the animal feed co-op; labor needs for transportation; and regular retail sales plus a food processing plant operation to harvest vegetables, animal meat (chicken and pork), and possibly goat or beef.    TO BE FUNDED.

4. A Development Office to make these projects self-sustaining as well as general program support for the foundation and to seek other donors and grants.

5. V3 Government Accountability and Monitoring is the direct observation of public officials conducting business when in public session; monitoring the attendance, opinion, and voting by these officials; comparing posted agendas with actual public policy business and issues discussed and voted upon at public meetings; and, a side task is the synthesis of blogs covering happenings in Brownsville.

6. Public Education program is part of the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month and other cultural heritage activities beyond that month including the screening of documentaries on the history, heritage, and contributions of the Hispanic community in the United States and public presentations by experts on the state of Hispanics in the country and South Texas.

 

No remaining funding for these projects:

 

1. Civic Engagement and Participation (V3) project consists of assisting in promoting voter education, registration, voting, and information on public policy issues, and conducting a community survey of citizens, residents, and undocumented persons seeking to get their voluntary information on cell phone numbers and email addresses.

2. Digital Divide project seeks to establish two pilot programs, one rural colonia and one urban neighborhood school, for school-age children to provide them with internet connectivity and an electronic device to use the internet. Increasingly, the public schools are posting school work on the internet making it impossible to access if the student’s family does not have internet or devices. 

3. 1st Amendment Project is a college bowl type competition among students, high school to university, over history of civil rights struggles of persons of Mexican ancestry in the U.S.