About Project Awareness and Our Goals

1. Educate students, faculty, and the community about the diverse multicultural character of San Diego County.

2. Educate the community about issues of importance in our region through Heartland’s award-winning online media outlet, www.EastCountyMagazine.org. In addition to general news coverage focused on the San Diego region, East County Magazine includes specialty sections to reflect the many multicultural voices in our area, as well as special sections on education, arts and music, green living, other feature topics, selected state and national news, and other important subjects for people in our communities.

3. Teach tolerance.

4. Provide information on the history and culture of various multicultural groups with the goal of enhancing respect for and interest in diversity.

5. Establish a mentoring relationship with youth and adults.

6. Make resources and services available that encourage and prepare youth for career opportunities and/or matriculation into higher education.

7. Establish a series of Multi-Cultural Awareness events that will teach tolerance and respect for diversity. The objectives listed below explain how that overarching goal will be reached:

• Project Awareness symposia presentations and demonstrations by visual artists, music scholars and musicians, performing artists, historians, and cultural anthropologists provide new information to students, parents, and community members on each of the four ethnic minority groups in our community to replace prejudicial myths and uninformed biases

• Interaction with symposia presenters and their work (visual art exhibition, musical performance, photographic archive, dance) provide to our students and community members new ways of considering a multicultural group’s contribution to our local and global community.

• Opportunities for students and community members to ask questions of scholars who are themselves members of the multicultural group they are expert in.

• Enhancement of understanding and appreciation for the artistic work and cultural artifacts of each of the multicultural groups studied in Project Awareness symposia, and new valuation for the specific types of art forms contributed by these groups (dance, literary art, visual art).

• Improved community relations among members of diverse multicultural majority populations in our community.

8. Establish a public art program involving the elementary, high school, and community college districts in producing student-designed public art that celebrates diverse cultures.

9. Establish a base for expanded external funding for Project Awareness through donations and grant applications.