In 2008, the Marguerite Casey Foundation selected our region to be a part of their National Equal Voice Network project, establishing the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network (RGV EVN) with substantial multi-year funding.
For over a decade, the nine nonprofits and six working groups in the coalition led major efforts in drainage reform, immigration advocacy, Census outreach, and GOTV mobilization.
During the first Trump administration, the RGV EVN also led critical efforts to end family separation and create mutual aid networks during COVID-19.
When the national Equal Voice Network model was sunset in 2020, our region faced the loss of the critical connective infrastructure that had sustained coordinated organizing across multiple sectors.
Rather than allow that networked work to fragment, local leaders initiated a year-long transition process—including community consultations, story circles, and a Transition Committee—to assess regional needs and determine how we should evolve.
EVN was formally closed through that process, and in 2021, Voces Unidas was launched as a more flexible, community-rooted organization designed to broaden participation beyond nonprofit leadership, strengthen transparent and inclusive decision-making, and advance civic engagement and environmental justice grounded in our own lived, everyday realities.
