Project Vida (formerly Project Verdad) is a program of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, originally developed to be a cross-border mission program involving ‘servi-iglesias,’ worshipping communities that would also be points of community development on both sides of the border between El Paso, TX and Juarez, Mexico in partnership with the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico. The NPCM focused primarily on the value of worshipping communities, while the PC (USA) and the CPC focused primarily on community development issues. This tension led to a realignment of the program in 1990, with each side taking its priority issues as their focus.
In the fall of 1990 Project Vida determined to shift its programs of community development and health education and outreach from the ‘Colonia’ areas of El Paso County and Juarez to the urban area of El Paso, in line with the new focus on community development. Its staff began surveying geographically identifiable communities in the City of El Paso where there was 1) visible need, 2) an absence of other agencies focused on that need, and 3) an interest on the part of community leadership to invite Project Vida to develop a conversation about the community’s future vision, its obstacles and challenges, and ways to begin to act together. For the first year, the constant question was, “¿Qué es el enganche?” – “What’s the gimmick? Where’s the hook?”
After a review of maps and census information, staff did ‘windshield surveys’ in order to get a sense of local community areas without raising inappropriate expectations. Staff then determined that the Zavala Elementary School area of East Central El Paso was both an area of visible need, and an area in which few other agencies were active at the time.
Initial interviews with PTA leaders, school nurses, and church and community leaders proved fruitful. Staff then conducted a 100 home survey based on random sampling of houses (every other block, every third house) and developed an initial assessment of identified community hopes and challenges. Project Vida purchased a residence in the community to begin a series of community conversations and to provide a physical presence in the community. Inviting community residents to discuss the results of the survey proved challenging. The first invitation came and went with almost no response. Then one neighbor came to talk. Project Vida staff later discovered that she was sent from a meeting of many curious neighbors, seeking to discover if Project Vida was a drug dealer or a group focused on religious conversion. For the first year, the constant question was, “¿Qué es el enganche?” – “What’s the gimmick? Where’s the hook?”
The program directions that emerged from the survey included access to health care, affordable and safe housing, gang prevention, and education. Staff and volunteers began providing health education, afterschool activities for children, and an early childhood class with parenting education in the facility. Time – and only time – overcame the initial suspicions. Project Vida applied for and received an initial Community Development Block Grant that was used to hire a Physician Assistant supported by a volunteer physician. The original clinic was one room in the rear of the residence, with just enough space for an examining table, desk and filing cabinet. Still without central heat, it is the current office of the CEO of Project Vida Health Center.
As programs developed, so did additional resources.These meetings – usually attended by 100+ participants, take half a day to review the previous year’s activities, identify hopes and concerns for the future, and recommend directions for program development.
The Meadows Foundation provided funding to secure an adjacent building that expanded the clinic to four examining rooms and an expanded space for pre-school programs. State funds for Primary Health Care then added to the Community Development Block Grant and numbers and staff grew. The service area expanded to include two additional contiguous elementary school areas, Douglas and Beall Elementary Schools. In 1994 the Board decided that the site was sufficiently permanent to begin housing development, and the first multi-family building was built in 1995 on the site of a condemned apartment complex. Additional condemned buildings were acquired and developed. By 2000, the Zavala Elementary School Counselor reported that children no longer needed to be warned about ‘shooting galleries,’ empty properties used for illegal drug consumption, since they had all been converted into safe and affordable housing by Project Vida.
Following 1992, Project Vida conducted annual Community Congress meetings. These meetings – usually attended by 100+ participants, take half a day to review the previous year’s activities, identify hopes and concerns for the future, and recommend directions for program development. Each community served by Project Vida – now East Central El Paso, Northeast El Paso, and the Montana Vista community in Far East El Paso County, has its own session. The results are shared with other agencies in the area in order to develop coordinated programs.
The first AmeriCorps projects followed an early use of VISTA Volunteers to expand services in the community. Promotoras began to provide health education services, and AmeriCorps Members offered afterschool programs and activities. Others developed new sites for housing, and still others worked to organize groups of neighbors to perform community ‘clean-up campaigns’ and to seek public improvements on streets and parks. Project Vida’s Early Childhood Development Center was licensed in this period, and the City of El Paso provided additional funding to add a building designed and constructed as a clinic, a full time child care facility, and a community meeting room to host annual Community Congress meetings as well as conduct physical activities, hold classes, and community events.
By 2003 Project Vida determined that it was appropriate to seek expansion to an additional area in Northeast El Paso. This was an area of high need, and had few community oriented programs working in it. Part of the expansion included developing an initial partnership with El Paso Mental Health Mental Retardation in order to expand integrated behavioral and primary care for both persons with mental illness and persons in primary care needing to address less severe behavioral issues. It sought Federally Qualified Look-Alike status and Community Health Center funding in order to accomplish the expansion. Initially renting space in Northeast El Paso, it was able to secure a loan from the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program to purchase the facility. Project Vida Health Center was both approved as an FQHC Look-Alike and funded as a Community Health Center in the fall of 2004. In the fall of 2008 Project Vida began a dental clinic in Northeast El Paso, and in the spring of 2009 it assumed responsibility for a community clinic in Montana Vista, in Far East El Paso County. It now serves over 10,000 people each year and administers over 100 low-cost apartmen
