Service-Learning OpportunitiesAt — Central Coast Alliance United for A Sustainable Economy (CAUSE)

CAUSE is a community group that organizes working-class immigrant families in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties to build people power for policy change to advance renters' rights, farmworkers' rights, and environmental justice. We engage residents in South Oxnard, Westside Ventura, and Santa Paula to build the leadership and political voice of workers, tenants, and youth.

CAUSE has a wide range of opportunities for engagement. Our most common opportunity is helping with community outreach that may include know your rights information for farmworkers, immigrants, and renters, or surveying or petitioning about an issue. Depending on timing and availability, we may also have opportunities for students to be involved in research and policy advocacy campaigns, multimedia content creation, and fundraising efforts.

Additional opportunities are offered in all CAUSE's neighborhood chapters: Oxnard, Santa Paula, West Ventura, South Santa Barbara, and Santa Maria Valley. 

1) Improving civic engagement in low-income communities: Work with us on this non-partisan effort to increase voter turnout of new and occasional voters in primarily Latino precincts across the Central Coast region to achieve state tax and fiscal reform in California.

2) Empowering youth: Help us work with youth in South Oxnard and Santa Paula to improve the school learning environment and make school lunches healthier. We also work with youth on film projects to document issues affecting their community.

3) Promoting Environmental Justice: Engage the community to protect low-income communities such as South Oxnard from pollution and health threats while increasing access to open space by protecting the Ormond Beach Wetlands and advocating for the Gateway Park to the Ormond Beach Wetlands. We are also working to create new urban parks in the Westside neighborhood of Ventura.

4) Encouraging green and accountable development: We established the triple bottom line network of businesses that goes beyond the economic bottom line to include a business̥s ecological and social costs and benefits. We are also working to establish community benefits agreements to hold developers accountable to the local community through jobs and investment. 

5) Increasing access to healthy food: CAUSE is working to establish community gardens on public lands, improving meals in public schools, and activating school wellness committees to improve the health of students. We are also looking at completing a farm to institution study.

6) Women̥s Economic Justice Project-Centro Mujer: Students can assist in the leadership development component of Centro Mujer. Preparing and conducting thematic lessons to share with participants. Students can also assist in the development of English as a Second Language (ESL) classes using popular education techniques and focusing on "the language of justice" in teaching English to immigrant women.

Also, we have three neighborhood-based organizing projects: The Green and Healthy South Oxnard Project/Voz Hueneme, Vecinos Unidos in Santa Paula, and the Ventura Avenue Leadership Team.

CAUSE is also interested in working directly with faculty from varied disciplines to build service-learning projects that support learning course outcomes.