Puentes Promotores
The Puentes Promotores approach works to develop student skills and campus-community connections while contributing to local organizing efforts to build capacity for grassroots problem-solving and mutual support in our region.
Courses teach skills in outreach, documentation, and advocacy; grassroots ethics and collaborative methods; knowledge of Santa Cruz County; and respect for site-specific work procedures. Specific course topics may shift according to the nature and objective of the projects our partner organizations are working on. Students in Promotores courses work with organizations to advance community-building and dialogue for justice in Santa Cruz County. (What is a promotor? See below…)
Our courses partner with one or more organizations at a time to advance a a collaboratively-defined project relevant to local networks. Projects and courses are designed months in advance. Know-Your-Rights efforts, along with short surveys and assistance with outreach that includes student perspectives and lowering participation barriers to education, health, housing, food, legal services, and art & recreation for diverse members of our community would be effective. Please get in touch if you have an idea for next year’s capacity-building project!
Maria Fernanda Alcántara Ornelas, one of the founding Puentes Promotoras.
I really enjoyed this project and class. It gave me a new perspective and brought me out from under my “STEM rock.” I feel more confident about talking about the census and injustices in our communities. As a future physician, I will take tools from this class to help me to continue to learn and change social injustices.
—Oakes 76 Participant, 2020
Jessica Chuidian-Ingersoll of Tenant Sanctuary
Puentes Promotores Courses
Oakes 76: Social Geography & Justice
Each year it is offered, Oakes 76 takes on a project that seeks to build Oakes College’s community relationships on campus and in the community, while building students’ understanding and skills. The course topic may change depending on the project we’re addressing with our community partner. 5 units. Satisfies PR-S. Enrollment: Oakes students or by permission code.
Oakes 152: Transformative Literacies
Transformative Literacies (152) works with community partners to advance ongoing projects for community development. Using Promotor skills and ethics, students will work to develop existing resources and community organization to advance critical participation on this issue–stronger social networks, public awareness, issue identification, and channels or tools for constructive change. 5 units. Satisfies PR-S. Enrollment: Oakes students or by permission code.
Past Puentes Promotor Community Partnership Projects
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Santa Cruz Youth Program Network Development, 2015 and 2016
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Santa Cruz Housing Justice, 2018
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Reaching the Hard-to-Reach: SC County Census 2020
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In Spring, 2020, Oakes 76 partnered with the Community Action Board to learn about community stakes involved in Census 2020. Students created social media, PSAs, and podcasts and used phone-banking to reach out during Shelter in Place.
What is a Promotor, and a Promotor Ethic?
In the US and the Global North, most organizations involving grassroots, promotor outreach among community members are funded by health organizations, and focused on health campaigns. Many publications and organizations even translate “Promotor” as “Community Health Worker” (CHW).
Training and organizing methods for community-based education gained widespread power and popularity throughout the world in the 1950s and 60s onward, as people encouraged each other (or promoted empowerment) through increased information and organization. In the Southern US, Black community educators like Septima Clark created the Citizenship Schools that in many ways were the foundation for the Black Civil Rights Movement. In Latin America, the “promotor method” of organizing networks and a culture of mutual support has continued to develop, along with great toolkits that are still evolving. These include “forum theater” or guerrilla theater (Boal); participatory media; and workshops and councils for exchanging knowledge, developing dialogue, and advancing restorative justice.
One of the largest and most powerful network of Promotores in the US is based in Los Angeles: Visión y Compromiso. VyC offers this excellent definition:
“Promotores are characterized by servicio de corazon (service from the heart). They educate, empower and advocate for community change in linguistically and culturally sensitive and responsive ways sharing a desire to improve their communities so that all families may know a better way of life.”
The Promotor Ethic that students learn in Oakes 76 and 152 is a way to guide organizing and communicative work so that we recognize each other as members of our own communities; as people with communicative resources we wish to put at the service of the community where they are living–which is only possible in dialogue. Above all, this is a way to orient outreach work that should build community.
