The Community Action Response Effort

American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions (AIT) is in swift transition after 25 years of providing programs and services across San Antonio. We are deliberately taking action to confront the radically transformative public health scenario of our time, and its potential aftermath, by having launched the Community Action Response Effort (CARE). This rapid response CARE Team is comprised of three full-time specialists in cultural arts and civic engagement, and three team members to deliver supplies and services across our service area. CARE Team engages our cumulative knowledge of mutual aid structures, cultural arts, public health, and civic engagement to provide the most basic needs and cultural nourishment to the families AIT already serves through its three branches of programming: Family Health and Wellness, Indigenous Arts and Civic Engagement.

Currently, we continue to provide online classes and appropriate home visits to families as a continuation of our family wellness programs (San Antonio Fatherhood Campaign). We re-root people in the wisdom of our Indigenous traditions and American Indian ancestry so families may rediscover cultural values such as interdependence, family unity and accessible healing modalities that are so imperative at this time.

We are using a concentric circle outreach approach to our process that can secure, at the core, AIT’s staff and their families, then our tribal community (Tāp Pīlam Coahuiltecan Nation), then the high-risk contacts from our Family Health and Wellness Programs, to be followed by the community members who are a part of the Indigenous Arts, Urban Indian SA and the Warrior Roots Community Organizing training camp, and finally the open public of San Antonio. This intentional outreach approach allows us to deepen our relationship with existing clients and program participants across the organization. Strengthening our network by serving our base creates the kind of social capital that can be responsive in current times of crisis.

This form will help us collect information about what specific resources you can provide. We are in search of varying means of support, of which all are crucial to our efforts to respond to a widespread emergency situation. Thank you so much for letting us, your community, know that we may count on you in times of desperate need. You are vital to what makes this city thrive in the face of what may otherwise be significant trauma to our San Antonio communities, who have already endured so much.