PSYDEH finishes 2018 strong and looks to 2019 for more progress creating lasting communities of change.
Since our 3rd quarter report,
THE WOMEN WE SERVE
Guillermina writes,
“I left school and started doing housework at the age of eight. With my being one of 16 siblings, there wasn’t enough food to eat nor money for education. Some of my siblings studied until high school, but I didn't. My parents said the school was too dangerous for me. At the age of 20, I married a humble man dedicated to farming. He studied until the third grade in primary school. I had 4 children to whom I have dedicated my life to help them get ahead. My oldest daughter studied until the first semester of college but then quit; I could not support her anymore and my husband did not want to support her. My other three children studied through high school but no further. They saw that they had no chance to pursue a profession and decided to cross to the north, where they now make their lives and have become parents, too. With my children off leading their own lives, I used my free time to study primary and then secondary school. I’ve earned my certificate. Now, I like to teach others what I learn with PSYDEH, to give support to those who need me.”
Guillermina’s story is one of 20 narratives PSYDEH helps to create with women leaders of our partner NGO network. Why? Stories bind us, they define who we are and what people think of us, and what we think of ourselves. We connect, collaborate, and make fairer, more inclusive societies through the compelling stories we weave, knowing that the most personal is the most universal.
Thanks to your investment in PSYDEH, our novel storytelling initiative will end with:
This work, and the other key elements of our project — embroidery initiative, NGO strengthening, and seed fund — will be completed by April 2019, just in time for women and their organizations to use the fruits of this work to strengthen their chances of securing funding from the new Mexican federal government.
GROWING FOOTPRINT
End of 2018 bears exciting tidings about PSYDEH’s growing brand.
GLOBALLY, (1) we have just been chosen as one of the top 15 nonprofits in GlobalGiving’s network committed to sustained impact in 2018. To be chosen as the only Mexican NGO on the list, from among hundreds of NGOs around the world, is seen by PSYDEH as the greatest of honors. (2) We continue to explore a multi-year collaboration with the Hamburg, Germany based Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation. (3) We look to leverage our partnership with USA-based professionals of the global Dentsu Aegis Network into a 2019 collaboration with their Mexico-city based colleagues.
NATIONALLY, (1) we wrap up our three-year term as Hidalgo’s only NGO representative to the Consejo Consultivo, the citizen board advising the government on indigenous community development. Among the national policies for which we’ve pushed is Mexico’s first national institute to guarantee rights for indigenous communities. (2) We now explore with GlobalGiving’s Mexico representative a seat on their new national leadership council of high-performing NGOs.
PROJECTS BUILDING OFF THE OTHER
PSYDEH just finished our first project with a national institute focused on fighting corruption (INAI) — another great opportunity to use our scalable program to make a sustained impact. Here, we are one of 22 Mexican NGOs across the Republic promoting knowledge and activism around the rights to access public information and to the protection of personal data. Why? For PSYDEH, these rights are the keys to citizens exercising all other rights. See HERE our short film promoting these rights and this project.
By design, this 2018 project and our nationally recognized 2016-2017 work strengthening women’s participation in Mexico’s democracy has led to PSYDEH being chosen for a new project to strengthen women’s leadership in electoral processes in 2019. We are stronger together, especially when strategically smart!
LOOKING FORWARD
Our 1st quarter 2019 report will celebrate PSYDEH’s:
¡Felices fiestas de México!
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2018 is proving to be an exciting year in our pursuit of creating lasting communities of change in Mexico.
Since our last report,
NATIVE WOMEN, OUR WORK IS RIGHT AND GOOD
Remigia Rivera, pictured above and the 32-year-old Otomí president of our partner NGO "Women With a Future", is one of 20 indigenous women leaders of a network of NGOs we incubate in 2018 with your crowdfunding investment. In recent workshops, Remigia and her peers, invited to share with folks like you around the world, offer comments like "I think we must invite all of our region's communities to our work. I enjoy what we learn with PSYDEH, especially recent workshops on how we can combat violence and pursue gender equality."
SUSTAINED IMPACT
Our free development work centers on strengthening women partners with knowledge on things like rights awareness and organizing training and support. In the summer/fall of 2018, this is translated into PSYDEH producing our (1) inaugural action-learning "Seed Fund" initiative, (2) innovative storytelling training, (3) embroidery investment project, and (4) conducting with women leaders a SWOT analysis of their NGOs while demonstrating the importance of organizational transparency. These actions double the return on your investment. One, you fund these actions. Two, these actions help to build the foundation from which women will launch their own actions in 2019. Two good impacts with one investment!
GLOBAL PARTNERS
"We are stronger together" in pursuit of our good work. This mantra resonates with women partners confronting abandonment and isolation and it resonates with us, a small NGO working for paradigm changes in Mexico. Recent evidence of this truth includes how our:
¡Juntos Somos Mejores!
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With this win-win quarterly report, we write less to share more.
PSYDEH is thrilled to announce the publication of our 2017 Annual Report in two forms:
This document marks a complete redesign of how we think about Annual Reports thanks to our ongoing collaboration with the global digital media and digital communications Dentsu Aegis Network. It speaks to a seminal year for PSYDEH in 2017, which we now build into bigger and better impact in 2018.
Second, with a picture worth a thousand words, and video better than a photo, we invite you into "our living room" with these two short video episodes from our feminine voices series:
Our harvest is bigger and better than ever, and we invite you to share in celebrating our progress.
Happy summer from PSYDEH!
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2017 was a seminal year for PSYDEH; 2018 looks just as bright!
Since our last report, we:
LATE-2017 WINS
In December, PSYDEH completed a federal government-funded initiative to strengthen indigenous women's participation in Mexico's electoral processes. This work continued progress started with our 2016-2017 award-winning initiative, is highlighted HERE in our most polished film-to-date and produced such tangible products as:
And PSYDEH continued pushing for a strong 2018 return on "Fruits of Change" investments by empowering our network of women-led NGOs to recently unveil their respective missions, visions, and logos in advance of 2018 project planning and fundraising work. See below these four logos.
2017 FRUIT TO BEAR MORE SEEDS IN 2018
PSYDEH's sustained success is dependent on effective partnerships inspired by the "bottom-up development" truth that we are better together. For example, and thanks to 2017 success, we
As exciting, PSYDEH recently enlisted Ms. Katie Freund, US Fulbright scholar, as our special projects coordinator. Ms. Freund, passionate about combining hard data and cultural studies to produce a sustainable impact, states, “I am excited to join PSYDEH because I love this region and the people who live here. And PSYDEH embraces the cultural richness of the communities in which they work, building off the natural and human resources that already exist here. It’s amazing to get to work with a team that is so committed to creating innovative, sustainable impact from the bottom-up.”
BIGGEST PUBLIC RELATIONS EVENT IN HISTORY
In late January 2018, PSYDEH was celebrated at a groundbreaking experience at La Cineteca Nacional de México, one of the most prestigious cinema centers in the world, produced by the innovative Colectivo Cine Social (CCS), with support from the Mexican federal government Secretaria de Cultura. See HERE for a video news story in Spanish on the experience by Xinhua News Agency.
The event took months to produce and was co-led by PSYDEH to offer 200+ Mexicans and foreigners from more than 8 countries a special screening of the new, highly-acclaimed film by director Ernesto Contreras: “Sueño en otro idioma” (Dream in another language), a panel discussion on indigenous rights, with a focus on the right of autonomy through language as key to sustainable development, and a post-event cultural experience.
The PR initiative is the most recent chapter in PSYDEH’s ongoing campaign to bridge urban and rural communities at the national and international level. And its another example of our leader-training methodology in action. As Marisela, panelist and PSYDEH indigenous women partner, says, “We as indigenous women have the same abilities, the same dreams, the same potential to be successful in life: we just lack the opportunities. And this event gives us the opportunity to have a voice, to tell our story, to speak directly to our country. “
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We refuse to let earthquakes, extreme weather and poverty stop us from progress.
Since our last report,
WE'VE DONE IT!
When PSYDEH launched our GG "Fruits of Change" campaign in late-September 2016, we had few income streams, no donor base, no social media presence, and no history of, nor a story about, working with foreigners. Thanks to you, we’ve made strong progress in each of these areas. Your investment funds these actions highlighted in our June field report video. And we tell our powerful story to institutional funders, how a little Mexican NGO joined forces with citizens from 16 countries in four continents to resist the "wall talk" by joining native Mexican women to solve local problems. Doubt us? See our interactive donor puzzle and this AMAZING image for proof!
OUR WORK, NATIVE WOMEN, RIGHT AND GOOD
Doña Luis Arroyo, the 67-year-old Otomí leader pictured above and a mighty force in our Umbrella Network of native women-led NGOs (Network), was scheduled to attend PSYDEH's first-ever public forum linking women with male government leaders on combating political gender violence. But, torrential rains converted the road to the Forum into an impassible landslide of mud and rock. Not one male official from her town made the trip. Doña Luisa was not deterred. Upon arrival, after hours of walking alone in her now-destroyed sandals, Luisa stated, "[a]s a leader of my community, our Network, there was no other option. I have the responsibility to be present at these actions no matter the challenges."
HOW TO FISH...
You help us teach native women how to sustain their own impact. In early summer, we began the second GG project objective: empower each women-led NGO to produce its own vision, mission, values and unique history statement, organizational logo and a plan for their first pilot project, i.e., NGO sustainability training. Work commenced with appreciative inquiry of women leaders about their demands for this element. We continued into the Fall with the second and third of five planned two-day work sessions resulting in each NGO producing its own rough draft of strategic plans and logos. Upon objective completion in early 2018, each NGO will be ready to raise its own funds and produce projects.
*WITH CAMPAIGN SUCCESS, this is our final GlobalGiving report. If you don't want future project reports sent directly from PSYDEH, send us an email @ unsubscribe@psydeh.com.
**TO LEARN MORE about 2017 returns and progress, be sure to check out PSYDEH's RECENT NEWS page.
¡Juntos Somos Mejores!
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