COVID-19 hit Mexico in March and has wreaked havoc since. For example, government programs to invest directly in people (around which we were creatively planning new work) have had their budgets cut or reallocated by 50-75-100% to combat the virus. PSYDEH views these challenges as opportunities. We execute this strategy to make progress in the field, with our finances, and as an organization.
FIELD
FINANCES
ORGANIZATION
READ MORE ABOUT THIS PROGRESS IN OUR 3rd QUARTER NEWSLETTER
LOOKING FORWARD
Our 4th quarter report will celebrate progress with our
Links:
PSYDEH and women partners do not take COVID-19 wreaking havoc on fieldwork and funding lying down.
Over the past few months, your donation helps us to
STORYTELLING AS LEADER TRAINING AND MARKETING TOOL
PSYDEH just released our long-anticipated e-book “NARRATIVAS”. Funded by you, this beautiful tool has 68 high-quality “narrative-oriented” photographs and 32 stories by indigenous women. See HERE to read the book, read featured stories in English, and learn about the initiative. *Note, we are of course mindful of local partners' personal data privacy; click on "Data Privacy Policy" at the bottom of our website to learn more about how we manage such issues.
COVID-19 PROJECT
To play our part in helping rural and indigenous communities navigate the pandemic, PSYDEH plans a new initiative and launched this crowdfunding CAMPAIGN to fund it. The forward-looking project supports five women-led organizations with (a) trustworthy coronavirus information they share with neighbors and (b) training on sustainable natural resource use while offering short-term (c) food assistance and income-generation help to 100 families.
2019 ANNUAL REPORT
We just published our most detailed and visually polished ANNUAL REPORT. Inside, you’ll read about 2019 work and awards, why our scalable model, our finances, and you’ll find interviews with our UK and USA staff. This high-quality report reflects the work that your hard-earned money funds.
LOOKING FORWARD
PSYDEH’s 3rd quarter report will celebrate:
Links:
Over the past five months, PSYDEH makes progress on multiple fronts despite serious COVID-19 challenges like seeing hoped-for-funding dry up and not being able to do any fieldwork.
Since PSYDEH’s last report, your investment helps us to
COVID-19
Information is power, always. This is especially true for vulnerable rural and indigenous communities needing to smartly navigate COVID-19 and its economic and social consequences. Thus, we produce a bi-weekly information series with trustworthy content in Spanish, indigenous languages, and English. See for example THIS episode with practical content like THIS video by a USA doctor whose first 30 minutes of advice are translated by PSYDEH for Spanish speakers. We also are about to start pursuing funding for COVID-19 recovery fieldwork.
MEASURING RESULTS
With our inaugural foray into the social enterprise field, PSYDEH’s wildly successful action-learning embroidery initiative, produced with your donation, connects women’s supply of high-quality artisan goods with global demand for such products. This puts money in women’s pockets. It directs all net gain to update these women’s organizations’ legal documents, a critical step for future fundraising. And with a 161% return on investment, this pilot project tells us that PSYDEH should do more of the same in 2020-2021.
We also completed our first comprehensive impact assessment. Some key quantitative takeaways are that 100% of women feel better prepared as leaders, and all but one said that they trust PSYDEH and its team. Qualitatively speaking, women partners tell us that we need to deliver more resources to local communities, e.g., high-impact projects, training, and permanent field staff. A PSYDEH staff person shares, "With PSYDEH, I get the opportunity to DO while applying thought leadership on how we solve complex problems facing Mexico and other democracies like growing social and economic inequality.”
IN THE PRESS + PUBLISHING
We are thrilled to be showcased in this human interest story in Mexico News Daily. It does a fine job explaining our complicated work in basic terms.
We've published THIS article on our replicable model and THIS article on how storytelling is key to actionable feedback. PSYDEH also published our 2018 Annual report in English and Spanish. Our 2019 report will be released in early June.
LOOKING FORWARD
PSYDEH’s 2nd quarter 2020 report will celebrate:
Stay safe and sane!
Links:
Since we last wrote, your investment helped PSYDEH to
FIELDWORK & FEEDBACK
Feedback is elemental to making a sustained impact. PSYDEH’s multi-year program was born from the appreciative inquiry of local leaders. Five years later, we now analyze responses to our summer 2019 comprehensive impact EVALUATION of our program from three key stakeholders: indigenous partners, public officials, and staff and volunteers.
Not all feedback is the same. We help beneficiary-partners give useful feedback by guiding them in ways to share their thoughts with government and others involved in solving wicked challenges. For example, we recently completed our FEEDBACK-FACILITATING MANUAL for indigenous women across the Republic on how they can use their right to access public information critical for actionable sharing, as well as their right to protect their personal data. Also, by year’s end, our NARRATIVE initiative will have trained women on how to be powerful storytellers, critical to actionable sharing in their communities and when representing themselves and their areas to the world. And they will have their own new organizational narratives, as well as personal poems, histories, and portraits living on the web.
Feedback matters. As this report goes to press, we are in the field exploring how best to CHANGE COURSE with our Seed Fund initiative to reflect women’s demands and the new Mexican government’s policy investing directly into the “pueblo”.
SHORT FILM “WOMAN CITIZEN”
For PSYDEH, photos and moving images reflect truth. They promote autonomy, are an antidote to feeling invisible, and are a very-2019-tool to inspire thinking. Our videos relay information. Our original films offer high-quality visual content designed to transport the viewer, to move her intellectually and emotionally. See for yourself. We recently premiered the next in our series of short documentary films called “Ciudadana” (Woman Citizen) recounting 2018-2019 rights-oriented work funded by the Mexican National Electoral Institute.
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL OUTREACH
In October, PSYDEH was chosen by GlobalGiving as one of seven Mexican nonprofits around the country to mentor their network of 120 Mexican nonprofits in 2019-2020. We also were among four non-profits from around the world, the only one from Latin America, invited by GlobalGiving to convene in Washington, DC with 20 others from the philanthropy sector to explore what we call the “Neutrality Paradox”. Damon Taylor, PSYDEH Senior Advisor and representative to the convening, states, “The conversation reinforces what we believe to be the truth, that the right solutions to wicked problems are best created when uniting diverse voices in a safe space… [And] it’s important to PSYDEH and grassroots organizations like us that global platforms’ access-focused processes keep the “human element” central and allow for nuanced review of complex dilemmas in countries like Mexico.”
LOOKING FORWARD
Our 4th quarter report will celebrate:
¡juntos somos mejores!
Links:
Since we last spoke, PSYDEH
WOMEN STORYTELLERS
PSYDEH neared completion of our inaugural storytelling initiative funded by you. Our goal? Pursue phases 5-7 in our process-oriented program when using stories to unite, link and support the women leaders of the Network to solve their own local problems.
This action invites vulnerable women to weave their personal stories and co-design photography portraits. And we reflect on their journey together since late-2015 when co-producing high-quality videos to tell their organizations’ and network’s stories to the world.
For example, the Otomí leaders of Mujeres con Futuro focus on what it means to collaborate across different, isolated communities, and to represent their communities at the municipal and state levels. And, the Nahua women leaders of Yolki Ino Yolo focus on their textile cooperative Yoltika Moda Artesanal.
From beginning-to-near-end, PSYDEH sees clear, measured progress by women using their stories to own their power. Katie Freund, initiative co-leader, says,
“One of the many big wins is how the women have named their regional organization Siempre viva (Always Alive) with a tagline “no me olvides” (Don’t forget me). This thinking, inspired by the names of flowers in their region, speaks to how the women want to see themselves, who they are. They choose the flower “Siempre viva” because no matter where each woman is or how far apart, their Network, this organization remains alive. And “no me olvides”, styled after the commonly known Forget-me-not flower, the symbol of victims of domestic violence, has two meanings. ONE, “don’t forget me” is a rallying cry. Due to home responsibilities, it is virtually impossible for women to be at all activities. This tagline helps them remember that all women are part of the collective decision-making process and should remain steadfast in the knowledge that they are better together. TWO, the flower metaphor captures their sentiment about those women leaders whose voices have been silenced by such things as an unexpected death, violence or the need to migrate to cities or “the north” for a livable wage. Their spirits, the women explained, remain in the hearts of those who still lead the organization. They are not and cannot be forgotten.”
PSYDEH will complete storytelling work in the 3rd quarter. Thereafter, the women’s and their organizations’ stories and videos will live on their respective webpages on PSYDEH’s website.
RIGHTS = INCREASED FEMALE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
PSYDEH completed its 2018-2019 project educating and organizing 170 rural indigenous women (and men) to use their right to access public information and right to personal data privacy to increase political participation. This work follows on the heels of our inaugural work promoting these rights and nationally recognized 2016-2017 work promoting women participation in electoral politics.
Project takeaways include:
COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY & NEW DIGITAL PLATFORM
Among PSYDEH’s myriad wins was our being chosen by the global Endeavor as one of eight mostly-global civil society organizations to speak at a private roundtable on ways to increase access to, adoption of information and communication technologies in Mexico. Learn more HERE about Endeavor’s Roundtable and our contribution.
Another win comes courtesy of our 2018-2019 collaboration with the digital communications and media giant Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN). Not only have we launched a new website in English and Spanish with a brand new look, but we’ve also updated our YouTube channel and Facebook pages in Spanish and English, as well as Twitter and Instagram. We’ve launched a new LinkedIn page too!
LOOKING FORWARD
Our 3rd quarter 2019 report will celebrate:
¡juntos somos mejores!
Links:
Project Reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you will get an e-mail when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports via e-mail without donating.
We'll only email you new reports and updates about this project.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
