WIMAUMA, Fla. — Mercy Martinez Figueroa laid lifelessly across a classroom table.
The nursing student wasn’t in peril. She was playing the role of a patient in medical distress so fellow students could perform a triage.
As those students assessed her condition, their excited laughs and smiles matched their vibrant hot pink scrubs.
To Martinez Figueroa and the other students, the nursing class is more than a class. It’s a transformation.
Right now, Martinez Figueroa works odd jobs on construction sites. She also cleans houses to support her family.
However, she believes the nursing class she’s currently receiving at Enterprising Latinas, a nonprofit in Wimauma, is a doorway to a medical career and a doorway to prosperity.
“I know that here I’m going to make it happen,” the Spanish speaker said through a translator.
Enterprising Latinas was founded in 2009 and has made it its mission to empower women in the Wimauma community, an agricultural community with a predominantly Hispanic population.
Enterprising Latinas teaches community members English, how to manage money, how to use a computer, and how to start and grow a business.
According to the nonprofit’s CEO and founder, Liz Gutierrez, training is vital for many in Wimauma as the community grows rapidly and shifts from farms to urban sprawl.
“Before, the plants were crops,” Gutierrez smiled. “Today, those plants have turned into homes.”
Pivotal to the nonprofit’s mission is its growing campus on State Road 674 in Wimauma.
Once a restaurant, the property now hosts the nonprofit’s headquarters and several modular classrooms.
Gutierrez, however, said the property has its shortcomings. She said it needs new signage, a repaved parking lot, an outdoor pavilion, and water lines running to the classroom buildings.
“We have 22 people sitting in a room, and they can’t go to a bathroom,” she said.
Gutierrez applied for a $931,000 federal grant to fund those upgrades, but Wednesday, that funding was denied by the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners in a 3-3 vote.
Three Republican commissioners argued the almost million-dollar ask isn’t a good deal for taxpayers.
“I just think that’s an exorbitant amount of money that they’re asking for these things — it’s the amount that concerns me,” said Commissioner Donna Cameron Cepeda.
She and other commissioners added that the county has more pressing needs.
“We need fire stations, fire rescue here in Hillsborough County,” Cameron Capeda said.
After the vote denying Enterprising Latinas the grand funding, county staff said they would develop another plan to spend the money.
Gutierrez, meanwhile, feels her group was singled out.
“I think it was deeply disappointing,” she said. “What’s different about us?”
Even without the grant, she said the important work the nonprofit does daily will continue.
“Because we believe that when women do well, their children do better, and the community does too,” she said.
However, she said the same scrutiny applied to her grant funding should be applied across the board to other groups that also receive federal grants.
