Texas Partners of the Americas

Texas Partners of the Americas (TPA) is incorporated in the State of Texas as a non-profit organization: the first and largest state affiliate of Partners of the Americas, a private organization that develops leadership, understanding, and opportunity in Latin America and the Caribbean through a network of volunteers. Texas Partners of the Americas' activities in Latin America include sponsoring projects in health and education, providing training and study in emergency preparedness for counterpart organizations from Latin America, distributing books and textbooks to Mexican universities, and making surplus U.S. and state government property available to its Latin American partners.

Texas Partners of the Americas (TPA) is incorporated in the State of Texas as a non-profit organization-the first and largest state affiliate of Partners of the Americas, a private organization that develops leadership, understanding and opportunity in Latin American and the Caribbean through a network of volunteers.

President John F. Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress in 1963, as a program of government-to-government economic cooperation in the Western Hemisphere. Partners of the Americas, originally called Partners of the Alliance, was established in 1964 as the people-to-people component of the Alliance for Progress. Dr. Jim Boren, a native Texan, founded the group that later developed into Partners of the Americas, and led the organization until 1970. Originally funded solely by the U.S. Agency for International Development, Partners of the Americas now has expanded support for its programs to include various other government agencies, foundations and corporations.

The national organization Partners of the Americas maintains an extensive network that links people and organizations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean with affiliates in 45 states of the U.S. and the District of Columbia. Its areas of activity include citizen participation; education and culture; youth; agriculture; women and families; outreach and advocacy. The organization also provides training and workshops related to emergency preparedness, economic development and other community development issues.

TPA's activities in Latin America includes sponsoring projects in health and education; providing training and study in emergency preparedness for counterpart organizations from Latin America; distributing books and textbooks to Mexican universities; and making surplus U.S. and state government property available to its Latin American partners. Among its crowning achievements was sponsoring an economic summit in 1989--the Camino Real conference--along with its Mexican Partners in Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, as well as hosting a visit by Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to Austin in February 1992.

Sources: El Mensajero (Quarterly Newsletter of TPA), Vol. 1, no. 2 (December 1988) and Vol. 1., no. 3 (August, 1989), and Partners of the Americas Website at http://www.partners.net/ .