Today marks an important milestone for our Consortium, as we embark on our fourth academic year as a statewide network of K-12 and higher education institutions committed to advancing the academic success of male students of color. To commemorate this important milestone, we are pleased to announce that our Consortium has been awarded a new three-year grant from The Kresge Foundation to advance our collective work through 2019 and beyond. The grant is a validation of the work we have done to date, but it also is a challenge for us to continue to enhance our efforts on behalf of the male students of color that we serve.
We are excited to announce that the Consortium been awarded a $400,000 Kresge grant to continue our initiatives into the next iteration of our work. This three-year grant will support the Consortium as we embark on a strategic planning process and will enable us to develop a sustainable model for our future work and continue to build capacity among our partner institutions to better serve boys and young men of color. 
We articulated two goals in the grant,
1) Build Capacity by Developing our Consortium Advisory Council & Engaging in Strategic Planning. To this end, we have four strategy sessions planned with the Consortium Advisory council during the first year of the grant. These sessions will be led by Dr. Luzelma Canales, Executive Director of RGV Focus/Educate Texas who brings year of experience in building collective capacities of organizations like the Consortium.
2) Help Males of Color get to and through college by Developing/Disseminating Institutional Capacity Building Tools and Activities to K-12 & Higher Education Institutions. This portion of the grant will allow us to continue to develop and disseminate our institutional capacity building tools and activities (CBTA’s) to our Consortium partners and to other K-12 & higher education institutions.
We are excited about our new goals for the Consortium. Stay tuned for more updates on the Consortium.
