Originally published January 28, 2016
By Leonard Martinez
UTEP Communications
Receiving a $20,000 grant can sometimes feel like winning the lottery, especially if it comes at the right time.
Borderzine, a bilingual journalism training program based at The University of Texas at El Paso, has been selected as one of 52 winners from across the country in the seventh annual Tom’s of Maine “50 States for Good” community giving program.
Tom’s of Maine is a natural products company focused on oral and personal care. For more than 45 years, Tom’s of Maine has invested in hundreds of nonprofit efforts by giving 10 percent of its profits back to organizations that support people and the planet.
The “50 States for Good” contest began with community members taking to social media pages to share #OneWaytoHelp their communities, amassing nearly 10,000 submissions. One entrant representing each state and Washington, D.C. was selected to designate a local nonprofit in their area to receive project funding from Tom’s of Maine.
“Somebody nominated us and I haven’t been able to find out who,” said Zita Arocha, director of Borderzine and associate professor in UTEP’s Department of Communication.
The money will go toward funding internships, technical support for the Borderzine website and recruitment efforts for the program’s annual summer high school journalism workshop.
Each semester, Borderzine has about 20 students who each work on four stories for the semester. Since 2008, Borderzine has published more than 1,000 stories about life on both sides of the border.
“Kids come to Borderzine and they hit the ground running,” Arocha said. “We try to run it as much like a newsroom as possible. They’re doing stories that local media usually can’t do because of resources.”
Borderzine has published stories about the dangers of the synthetic drug spice, immigrants being scammed, suicide, and drug abuse.
The students also report on stories from Juárez, Mexico, such as a profile on a boxer teaching children about the sport and an orphanage dealing with more orphaned children due to violence in the city.
“We are touching the community at a grassroots level,” Arocha said. “We deal with the totality of the border on both sides.”
For UTEP senior Genaro Cruz, Borderzine helped him decide his career path.
“(Borderzine) helped me before I was even in the program,” Cruz said. “I was going to high school in Juárez and I was chosen for the summer workshop Journalism in July. It was my first introduction to journalism and gave me the opportunity to see what it was about.”
Cruz later became a reporter and then a city editor at Borderzine, an experience he says has helped in the workplace.
“As city editor I learned how to work with your fellow editors and peers, as well,” Cruz said.
He says the experience has served him well. In addition to being a full-time student majoring in multimedia journalism, Cruz is a technical director at Univision in El Paso for two local newscasts and two regional newscasts.