The Mujeres de Accion/Women in Action Oral History Project began in 1994 when two Colorado State University (CSU) graduate students, Holly Ford and Kelly Haughey, began a study of Chicana/Latina/Hispanic women in the Northern Colorado and Front Range of Colorado region. Ford and Haughey interviewed twenty-one women from the communities of Fort Collins, Boulder, Brighton, Denver, Fort Lupton, Lafayette, and Longmont who were community advocates for their culture and society in general. The subjects' efforts centered around human services, including health care, grassroots community organizations, education, and services for senior citizens, the disabled, and people with substance abuse disorder(s). Interviews were based on the questions: "How do Hispanic women identify themselves as being active in the community?"; "What factors do Hispanic women identify that have influenced them to become active in the community?"; and "What factors do Hispanic women identify that sustain and support them in remaining active in the community?". Ford and Haughey presented their research for the degree of Masters in Social Work at CSU. In 1996, their work was accepted for publication in Social Work: The National Association of Social Workers with their advisor, Marceline M. Lazzari.

At the conclusion of the project, Maria Melendez and Mary Ellison used Ford and Haughey's results to write a manuscript detailing the women involved, funded in part by grants from the CSU Center for Studies of American Ethnicity and the University Health Service. Attempts to find a publisher were unsuccessful and their manuscript remains unpublished.