FRESNO, Calif. — The Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) at California State University, Fresno has launched its November 2025 crowdfunding campaign under the banner “Expanding Horizons, Connecting Generations.”

With a goal of $15,000 from at least 200 donors, this campaign renews PBBI’s founding commitment: to serve as a living bridge linking students, scholars, and communities of California’s Central Valley with the Portuguese-speaking world.

Since its creation in February 2019, PBBI has become a dynamic space of learning, translation, creativity, and memory. At these crossroads, generations meet through culture, literature, and the enduring rhythms of the Portuguese language.

“PBBI was born out of the conviction that our stories matter — that the memory of migration, of family, of language, can become the foundation for a better world,” said the founding director of PBBI. “To expand horizons is to keep that bridge alive, to let new generations walk across it.”

Building Opportunities for Students

At the heart of the campaign lies the mission to open doors for students. PBBI continues to strengthen its partnership with the University of the Azores, expanding scholarship support, faculty-led study trips, and exchange programs that allow students to experience Portuguese and Azorean life firsthand.

The Institute also supports Portuguese language and cultural studies at Fresno State, including two minors in Portuguese, while hosting visiting scholars, poets, and artists from Lusophone countries — bringing the Portuguese-speaking world into the classroom and the community.

Literary and Cultural Platforms

Through Bruma Publications, PBBI’s publishing arm, the Institute champions bilingual and translated works — poetry, memoirs, essays, novels, and critical studies that amplify Portuguese-American and Lusophone voices. We have published 24 books in the last 3 years. https://filamentosarteseletras.art/2023/12/08/bruma-publication-from-pbbi-fresno-state-books-for-all-seasons/

Digital platforms Novidades and Filamentos continue to be vital spaces for creative expression, hosting literary features, art exhibitions, and collaborative translations that link the Central Valley to the Azores, Portugal, Brazil, and beyond. https://novidadesnewsletter.news/ and https://filamentosarteseletras.art/

Our PBBI-Fresno state YouTube channel archives all of our conferences, talks, panels, workshops, documentaries and oral histories: https://www.youtube.com/@fresnostatepbbi4748

Remembering, Recording, and Sharing

PBBI’s Oral History Program remains a cornerstone of its mission — training students to record and preserve the stories of the Portuguese-American experience. The recordings are archived at Fresno State’s Henry Madden Library, ensuring that family memories become part of public history.

With your support, PBBI will expand into documentary storytelling and digital media, producing short films, podcasts, and multimedia narratives that give voice to the past while inspiring the future. PBBI, through the Fresno State Library, has a full archive and an Azrean book section. https://library.fresnostate.edu/find/pbbi-collection

Community Engagement and Leadership

PBBI remains a catalyst for civic and cultural participation through collaborations with the California Portuguese-American Coalition and the Portuguese-American Leadership Academy, nurturing civic engagement, leadership, and cultural pride among emerging generations.

The Institute also leads the Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance (ADMA), an unprecedented transatlantic partnership connecting journalists, broadcasters, and media platforms across the Azores, the United States, Canada, Bermuda, and Brazil. ADMA promotes cultural literacy, media cooperation, and mutual visibility between the islands and their global diaspora.

Looking ahead to 2026, PBBI is proud to help launch the Azorean Diaspora Forum, a major international gathering that will bring together scholars, cultural leaders, and community representatives to reflect on the future of the Azorean presence in the world — bridging the ten islands and the “tenth island” of the diaspora through dialogue, creativity, and shared purpose.

In 2025, PBBI will also continue its signature cultural programs — the Cátedra Natália Correia, the Alfred Lewis Bilingual Reading Series, the Cagarro Colloquium, and a range of public lectures, poetry readings, and art exhibits celebrating Lusophone creativity.

What Your Gift Makes Possible

Your contribution fuels:

  • Student Projects, including assisting with exchange programs
  • Visiting scholars, conferences, and symposia
  • Publication and translation of bilingual books
  • Digital infrastructure for Novidades and Filamentos
  • Oral-history preservation and documentary production
  • Public lectures, community programs, and art events

Each donation — large or small — becomes part of a greater bridge that connects California’s Central Valley with the Atlantic world of language, culture, and memory.

A Call Across the Diaspora

“Every seed we plant through education becomes a future of possibility,” Borges reflected. “Each donor, each friend of PBBI, becomes a gardener of culture — nurturing roots that reach across oceans and generations.”

As the year draws to a close, your contribution can make that difference — funding a student’s first trip to the Azores, preserving a grandmother’s story, or giving voice to a new generation of Portuguese-American writers.

Now is the moment to help expand horizons and connect generations.
Let us keep the bridge alive — from the fields of the San Joaquin Valley to the cliffs of the Atlantic.
In every gift, there is a story; in every act of generosity, a light that crosses the ocean.

Join the campaign today at
👉 https://crowdfunding.fresnostate.edu/project/48115
and become part of the story that continues to unite us all. The campaign will end on November 30th.