Esperanza Peace and Justice Center

Greetings Buena Gente of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center:  We are reaching out to ask that you consider a donation during the month of September to the Esperanza either---online, over the phone, or in person. Our goal is to raise $26,000.  We invite you to support our work of culture with community, art with advocacy, and respect with rights. 

Be one who "Gives Big" to Big Give SA by donating during the 24 hour online giving from Wednesday, September 23rd at 6pm through Thursday, September 24th at 6pm.  Contributions may also be made by bringing or sending your gift to our office at 922 San Pedro Avenue from  Wednesday, September 16th through Sunday, September 27th.  Contact Richard J. Aguilar, FundRaising Organizer at Esperanza:  210-228-0201, and fundraising@esperanzacenter.org.  Online contributions may be made by going to:  bit.ly/supportesperanza.  We are grateful for your consideration and support.  

Esperanza was founded in 1987 by a group of mostly Chicana activists seeking to bring together diverse movements for justice and peace in San Antonio and throughout the world.  In the early years Esperanza was engaged in caravans to Central America, counter-protests at KKK rallies, mural projects that encouraged youth to be artists, and the first art exhibit in Texas to focus on the AIDS Crisis and the Queer Community.  Esperanza is politically progressive, loudly outspoken, and an unwavering force on behalf of all humanity and the world's climate.  Over the last 39 years, Esperanza has become a unique center which has galvanized into a Buena Gente that is multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual where diversity, equity, and inclusion are valued.  Esperanza is latinx, African-Americans, Asian Americans, Indigenous peoples, and Euro-Americans.  

We are the economically oppressed collaborating with the middle class.  Esperanza is persons of color, feminists, working class, LGBTQIA2S+, public housing residents, domestic workers, immigrants, and many silenced communities of San Antonio, Texas, the United States, and nations across the globe. By coming together, we ensure that Esperanza becomes stronger in advocacy for the preservation of the cultures, customs, traditions, spaces, and lands of the majority of the population. Esperanza's work is manifested through encouraging, energizing, and empowering every soul to stand up and speak out.  Therefore, we are called to look, prepare, resist, organize, and promote change.  We seek to dismantle white institutional racism, to eliminate corporate favoritism, and to eradicate systemic injustices towards creating an equitable and peaceful society with justice for all. 

The work of Peace and Justice have been significantly challenged in the year 2026.  The political landscape in the United States has turned draconian and violent even beyond what was imagined after the polarizing Election of 2024.  The current Administration in Washington, D.C. has ordered the defunding of numerous federal grants that supported many non-profits which, accentuates the lack of available funding.  The State Legislature and Governor of Texas have supported laws that have caused further burdens. These myopic decisions have affected Esperanza and have led to hardships among systemically oppressed households of all backgrounds and ages.  There has been over the years a strict limitation on funding from national, state, and local institutions that support non-profit community organizations. The current situation in 2026 has worsened this scarcity of funding from governmental departments and foundation sources.   

Esperanza has been able to sustain vision and mission because of our generous Buena Gente. The great majority of Esperanza’s organizing work has been funded through individual donations and staffed through the efforts of many volunteers since our founding in 1987. The bountiful giving of time, talent, and money from Buena Gente has built an empowered solidarity. Contributions from the breadth and depth of our community have empowered Esperanza for almost four decades to listen, touch, sing, dance, draw, create, display, heal, inspire, build, and enjoy better lives for many persons.  The result is changed human beings who make a positive difference in their households, their neighborhoods, their workplaces, their city, and the world.  What is encountered is a new existence that is founded on respecting the dignity of all people and honoring the ecosystems of our planet. Esperanza sustains community connections through the maintaining of a year-round calendar of cultural programming and justice sessions witnessed by over 80,000 attendees each year.  These gatherings include art presentations, musical concerts, training workshops, theater performances, educational courses, film screenings, panel discussions, organizing for protests, speaking out at school board sessions; city council meetings, and other places to promote the common good.  Be Buena Gente who give to Esperanza!