Where is Colima?

  The Colima Project at Contra Costa College began ten years ago in the rural town of Colima, El Salvador, a sugarcane growing community of 500 families about 40 minutes north of San Salvador. Professor Julia Marshall from San Francisco State University's Department of Art traveled with a group of art education students to Colima in the summer of 2001 to initiate a month-long arts and culture exchange with children, adults, families, and schools. The program was hosted as a short-term study abroad course through SFSU's College of Extended Learning every year from 2001 until 2011, when Contra Costa College's METAS program began to transition the project into its internship opportunities and enrichment activities for Latino youth and families.

    For eleven years, The Colima Project has remained in cross-continental partnership with the town of Colima. In 2003, a program evaluation showed that Colima's commitment to development included not only the immediate concerns of employment, housing, agricultural development and civic development, but cultural celebration and preservation. Colima's emphasis on culture as a critical element of a thriving community has fed a partnership that engages critical questions in Colima around local land and story, and which challenges artists, youth, and individuals to take leadership roles in defining 'development', individually and collectively.

    Each year since 2001 (with the exception of 2011), a group of artists, students, and other professionals has traveled to Colima to collaborate around the town's stated development goals. 

These projects have included:


                        - Construction and installation of mosaic trash cans
                        and collaboration with local government to organize trash collection;

                        - Work with performing arts and music in collaboration with 

                        the Casa Cultural, Aguilares, El Salvador;

                        - The renovation of a school classroom into a 1,500-volume library; 

                        - A three-year investigation into oral history and local legends; 

                        - An exploration into neighborhood gardening and agricultural practices 
                        including the renovation of outdoor spaces at Colima's Casa de Salud;

                        - More than a dozen murals in five sites throughout the town of Colima.

    Currently, The Colima Project is focusing on the role of youth within the community at a moment when local and global economies mean rapidly shifting futures for employment, immigration, and rural life in El Salvador. Public safety, youth leadership, and citizen and youth involvement in engineering and design processes are all subjects of inquiry for this year's projects in art, science, math, engineering, and technology.