BARRIOS UNIDOS INSTITUTE OF PEACE & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
MAKE THE DREAM A REALITY: THE NEXT 50 YEARS OF MOVEMENT BUILDING
Transforming its current property at 1817 Soquel Ave,Barrios Unidos looks to build a modernized institute,serving as a physical community anchor for the nextgenerations of community leaders. Year round, theinstitute will provide culturally rooted programs,indigenous based ceremony, food assistance, jobtraining, art building, industry, and a central plazafor gatherings, healing, and learning.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING FORTHE NEXT GENERATION
As housing prices skyrocket, our young people,Santa Cruz natives, historically marginalizedcommunities, artists, students, and workers canno longer afford to live here. This not onlydiminishes the cultural richness of our area, butforces our non profit workforce and volunteerbase to flee to more affordable areas. We needto build a space where our communitymembers can live with dignity. This will allowthem to contribute their skills and realize theirsacred purpose as community leaders. TheBarrios Institute of Peace and CommunityDevelopment will incorporate an affordablehousing complex that allows for opportunity.
A PLACE FOR EXCHANGE, LEARNING AND BELONGING
ActionBarrios will serve as an Anchor Institution – aspace of passage, belonging, learning andexchange. The space will hold our screenprinting shop, audio engineering program,coffee shop, and other vocational trainingprograms, while providing food assistancethrough our food pantry program, supportpreviously incarcerated individuals through ourreentry program, and leadership developmentthrough our youth program. Our institute willprovide space for community events, concerts,and other events- giving the community aplace to gather and strengthen bonds.
LA CULTURA CURA / CULTURE CURES
A communal hub for people to heal and regainone’s cultural bearings; a safe space forunconditional acceptance, cultural expression, andinter-cultural exchange; an organic learning centerto develop leaders, nurture healthyintergenerational relationships, and preserve thesacred passage of ancestral values-basedknowledge for building traditional communalstructures that nurture its people. The Institute willprovide spaces that hold sweat lodge ceremonies,circulos, drum circles, danza, and many moreindigenous based, culturally rooted activities-something that is novel in Santa Cruz.
ADVOCACY IN ACTION
The Barrios Unidos Institute of Peace and Community Development will represent decades worth of work and sacrifice and act as an anchor and blueprint for the next generations to face the great social problems of our time and further achieve peace in our communities. It will act as a mobilizing structure – allowing our youth to lead educational workshops, plan and attend advocacy events, and be at the frontline of social change. Leaders from across the country will travel to the institute, giving the Santa Cruz community access to nation wide networks and mentorship.
