Who We Are
The Multicultural Engagement Center is a student led resource center dedicated to the affirmation, uplift, and education of historically marginalized students on the University of Texas at Austin. Our mission is to empower students to be agents of positive social change on campus and beyond our forty acres. This is achieved through programming, dialogue, academic and mental health support, and personal/professional development opportunities. Currently, we operate with five full time staff members which includes a director, two assistant directors, a program coordinator, and a senior administrative associate as well as fourteen student staff employees.
What We’re Fundraising For
While programming remains a key component to the work that we do, our staff has began to consider the impact of incorporating the goals of the core competencies of career readiness into the ways that we shape and define our conversations and practices. The MEC's Inaugural Alternative Breaks program will explore the histories, modalities, and praxis of social justice activism and advocacy within the various contexts that student leaders interact with during and following their time on campus. They will examine what they currently know about activism and advocacy and through the AB practice reframe their understanding of social issues and social change. We aim to connect academic inquiry to actions that will improve society and their respective communities, empower them to demonstrate an ability to analyze social issues, evaluate competing claims and justify their positions, and demonstrate personal and interpersonal development via the experience with the alternative break. During their time in New Orleans, students will meet with campus and community leaders within the city of New Orleans and learn about issues that the campus community and surrounding community are facing. The goal is for the students to develop an informed activist framework where they can begin to understand how to utilize the skills that they are learning in their classrooms, in their respective organizations, within their interpersonal relationships, etc in their future careers, internships and/or graduate programs.
Your Impact
As the campus community has become increasingly diverse, the center has come to be a hub for mobilization about various campus issues that students are committed to changing. However, students that have a passion for this work are often involved in many organizations on campus that require a financial investment for their participation. Therefore, our goal is make our alternative breaks program financially accessible to as many students as our program will allow (20 students). To this end, our donors would help to maximize the impact of this program by eliminating the often steep financial responsibility that accompanies an opportunity like this. Your donation will help to fund transportation, lodging, food, and/or activities while students learn to translate their passions into applicable skills for their futures.