Colonia residents struggle to pay for safe, healthy infrastructure

EL PASO – Two years after getting help to improve the quality of water storage and waste management, Cuadrilla – a small, unincorporated community on the far eastern edge of the Lower Valley – still struggles with infrastructure problems that residents say they can’t afford to maintain. This colonia is made up of a couple hundred people that, before the septic and water tanks were installed, used to get their water from a nearby canal. But the water in the canal has high levels of salt, which damages containers and is too polluted for safe consumption, residents said. Up until recent years the Cuadrilla residents did not have any source of clean water, until a local nonprofit organization called AYUDA provided them with septic and water tanks. Before the organization helped them install the septic tanks for their homes properly, the residents of the Cuadrilla community used improvised septic tanks and outhouses that most of the time were left uncovered and were unsafe.

Business students compete to advise Borderzine on rebranding effort

EL PASO — Three groups of business students with names like Corporate Eight, Innovation and Crazy Mariachis presented their semester’s project last week to a panel of judges at the College of Business Administration. The students, part of professor Denisse Olivas’ Multicultural Marketing class this semester, were eager to showcase their rebranding projects to their client, Borderzine.com. The judges included a professional team from Eureka!, a local design and ad company, and two borderzine staff members, Webmaster Lourdes Cueva Chacón and Program Assistant Ángel Cancino.The purpose of the projects was to help the organization get more page views, broaden the target audience and provide suggestions for the redesign of the site. The winning group was Corporate Eight, composed of students Valeria García, Brianda Herrera, Eduardo Perales, Pete Ramirez, Linda Gonzalez, María Chavez, Roxana Cabral, and Carlos Perez.“I think it’s a great opportunity to learn more,” said Brianda Herrera, a senior marketing major and member of the winning group “I think it’s a perfect implementation of our knowledge but also to go out there and research a real company, a real brand, a real magazine.” Olivas said she devised the hands-on project to teach her students the necessary skills that they will need once they entered the professional business world. She was first contacted by Cancino to help with the rebranding project for the website that features student multimedia stories about borders.