Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción: creating impactful experiences for university students

To transform Puerto Rico, it is necessary to break down economic and social barriers and work collaboratively. With that in mind, in 2012, Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción was born. This nonprofit organization bets on building a community of young leaders who want to change Puerto Rico through training spaces, civic action, and positioning that will generate projects for the transformation of the Island.

Its Executive Director, Carolina Mejías Rivera, is an example of the organization's impact for over a decade. When she was in high school, people around her told her not to aspire to get into college. However, this young woman, a native of the Río Abajo neighborhood, La Trocha sector in Vega Baja, fought to achieve her dream and, thanks to playing soccer, she entered the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, where she completed a bachelor’s degree in Political Sciences.

"Once I entered the University and saw all the obstacles and challenges that a university student has, but even more so a student who comes from a community that for years and years has been marginalized and has been impoverished in Puerto Rico, I focused on seeking support in student organizations that would help me develop critical analysis and be on par with other students," Mejías Rivera shared.

In that search, she came across Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción, also known by its acronym MPA. Although MPA is not a student organization and does not belong to the University of Puerto Rico, it is a nonprofit organization that works directly with the university population.

"The organization inserted me in other community spaces where I could see that empowerment and that desire to fight that we people from the neighborhood have, as one says, and in the same way, I could interact with other people within the organization who did not necessarily come from the public university and who came from other social and economic backgrounds. That's when I began to remove all these class barriers to unite and work collaboratively because the main objective is to move Puerto Rico forward," Mejías Rivera said. After that, the young woman became involved in various of the organization’s programs, such as “Programa de Apoderamiento y Renteción de Agentes de Cambio (PARACa)” and “En Acción.” Then, she became the Executive Director of the organization.

“After Hurricane María, ConPRmetidos was one of the driving forces behind the En Acción project, and we went out into the communities to support them,” she said. After that, a relationship began between the two organizations that helped insert the university population to work directly in the third sector through the PARACa program. Mejías Rivera says this is done “through social internships so that they can advance social causes in the country that help eradicate poverty in Puerto Rico.

Currently, ConPRmetidos is supporting MPA with a $20,000 grant that has paid for the placement fees for 8 internship spaces in the summers of 2022 and 2023 and helped with the program’s operations. The organizations that have had intern support thanks to ConPRmetidos are: Albanistería en la Brega, Conocimiento Digital en tus Manos (CoDEM), Impacto Juventud, Mumas Renaciendo, Piñones Aprende y Emprende (PAYE) and Instituto Tecnológico de Vieques (ITEC).