| University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Center for Civic Engagement intends to use its Community Outreach Partnership Centers grant to link three partnerships and multiple organizations around the following themes and use Spanish and English formats to ensure fair access for disadvantaged people: 1) One-Stop Shop for Nonprofits will facilitate collaborations among multiple partners, provide training workshops with Community Housing Development Organizations (CHDOs), and build interactive relationships with students through class-produced results such as low-literacy, reader-friendly housing manuals in fotonovela form, scripts, and plays in teatro; 2) Profile of Women to build a Women’s Fund will connect existing surveys, adding more from colonias, to a community-wide educational campaign on diverse women’s needs (especially the lack of living wages for Hispanic women, who earn 37 percent of non-Hispanic male wages) to raise money for a women’s fund for grants and loans to microentrepreneurs (El Paso lacks such a fund, unlike other large cities); and 3) Policy Performance Virtual Think Tank will document and disseminate reports and then post them for user-friendly nonprofit access and networking among policymakers, community activists, and students and faculty members in policy roundtables. Three resident-driven neighborhood plans will be produced (two EZ, one Colonia). The COPC will connect long-term, deep partnerships in a coherent set of activities that will build civic capacity and leadership among adults and youth through service learning at the university and in Enterprise Zone-located Bowie High School’s magnet school of public affairs.
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