Projects

MANY TIMES OVER

During the past twenty-five years the board has consistently chosen to support grant requests which, like seedlings, have the potential to grow and multiply. Many Expanding Horizon’s projects have multiplied one thousand fold. Below we enumerate specifics from a few of our past grants.

PROYECTO AZTECA 1990

This project reflects Expanding Horizons’ commitment to listen and respond to requests from the bottom up, to encourage self-help, and to seed projects that will bear an abundant harvest.

In 1990, Proyecto Azteca, a community board established by the United Farm Workers’ Union, based in San Juan, Texas, asked Expanding Horizons for $16,000 to pay for materials to build one house. This was the first step in an ambitious self-help housing project designed to better the lives of farm workers’ families. These families lived in flimsy substandard houses on sewage filled streets, in isolated, unincorporated colonias. Expanding Horizons’ grant and the community’s determination to help itself, resulted in the immediate building of five more houses. That determination in turn, has resulted in over 50 million dollars in federal and state grant money, and in the construction of more than six-hundred houses. Watch a video about Expanding Horizons

RAISING AUSTIN 1998

This project illustrates the Foundation’s determination to provide seed money for proposals that encourage collaboration and expansion.

Recognizing the critical need for excellent early childhood education and the lack of training for teachers in that area, Expanding Horizons called together six local foundations in 1998 to host a forum called “Early Childhood at Risk”. At the forum Mayor Kirk Watson chaired a panel of private and governmental stakeholders.

The same foundations formed a 501c3 organization, The Austin Collaborative for Children. Today that organization is called Raising Austin. It continues to provide training programs community-wide and to raise the quality of life for children of Austin’s working poor.

The key to the success of this project was the collaboration, the first of its kind in Austin, among local private foundations around this critical issue. Expanding Horizons made an annual commitment of $60,000 over a three year period, which helped generate over a million dollars in contributions from the other foundations.

DOORS & FLOORS 2001

These two projects illustrate the Foundation’s intention to work from the bottom up in addressing needs identified by the very poor.
In 2000, the board of Expanding Horizons asked several community representatives to apply for an “If Only I Could…” grant. It challenged low-income, grass-roots individuals to design a project that would help them realize their dreams for community improvement. We selected two projects to support: the Doors and the Floors.

Neighborhood Housing Services replaced doors on various houses in the St. John’s neighborhood of Austin to “make a difference in the lives of homeowners too poor to get home repairs but too rich to get assistance”. Each of the chosen families reciprocated by volunteering twenty hours in a gardening project at Reagan High School. Expanding Horizons contributed $6,500 to this project. The result was a home improvement-based project which helped upgrade not just particular homes but the entire St. John’s community.

The Floors project replaced unsanitary carpeting in a daycare center’s classrooms and also a dining hall at the True Light Day Care Center in East Austin. This problem was a big concern to the teachers there not only for health reasons but also because it restricted their class curriculum and activities. With help from Expanding Horizons, volunteer and corporate contributions, new flooring was installed in the center.

We believe that support for affordable housing and improved early education brings benefits that transcend those areas themselves. Better schooling and decent housing in improved neighborhoods, while enriching individuals’ lives, strengthen and, indeed, expand the horizons of families and entire communities as well.

“HOUSING MATTERS” CONFERENCE 2002

This project illustrates Expanding Horizons’ commitment to innovative solutions that address long-standing problems through community collaboration.

The “Housing Matters” Stakeholders Conference was held in November, 2002. Organized by the Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service and funded largely by a grant from Expanding Horizons, the two-day event brought together homeless people, public housing residents, project developers, bankers, elected officials, and housing experts – from all parts of Texas. These men and women hammered out a set of unanimously agreed upon goals and principles to promote the cause of affordable housing in Texas. From the meeting, a permanent coalition, “Housing Texas”, has emerged, with these united energies saving 30 million dollars in state money to house the poor. It also has been instrumental in raising Texans’ public awareness of the housing plight of their fellow citizens. The stakeholders conference continues to impact exponentially the low income housing problems in Texas.