About PACP

Who we are

The Portuguese American Citizenship Project was created as a non-partisan effort to promote citizenship, voter registration and voting in the Portuguese-American community. The Project was initiated in 1999 and incorporated in 2003, with the sponsorship of the Luso-American Foundation for Development and the Regional Government of the Azores.  In 2016, the Board of Directors voted to dissolve the Corporation and terminated its programs.

This closing finished the central organizing function that the Project had provided over the years. It eliminated the data processing, voter card preparation, analyses of elections, and overall national synthesis and coordination of civic promotion programs. The Project’s closure had no effect, however, on the lessons learned, the skills honed, and the civic confidence gained from the entire 16-year experiment. Its ‘operating manual’ still exists and the underlying support structure is undiminished.

The primary objective of this website is to provide a guide to anyone who wishes to take up the cause of promoting civic participation in the Portuguese-American community.

The Project’s entire campaign architecture is presented in the workbook “How to Organize Politically “.   

A guide to addressing the specific community concern regarding Portuguese language instruction is presented in the workbook “Starting Portuguese in Your School”.

Most importantly, none of the individuals who made the Project run have gone away and they are willing to help any community continue the struggle. If any other Portuguese-American wishes to take up the cause, further information and advice can be obtained by contacting the individuals listed in this website.

In January 2020, “The Final Report: A History of the Portuguese American Citizenship Project” was published. The book is a comprehensive review of the Project’s origins, the development of its methodology, and the experiences of the individual communities over its 16-year span of operations.  Appendices and supplemental information related to the Final Report is provided in this section. Information is also available on how to purchase the book through the Washington D.C. bookstore, Politics and Prose or through Amazon Kindle.