Help Marginalized Mexican Women Overcome COVID-19

In 2020, your donation helped PSYDEH to see challenges as opportunities. 

During the fourth quarter, the entire year really, during these difficult COVID-19 times, we asked ourselves this: is there a way to still thrive, to be more resilient?

Showcasing how we get to “yes,” how we use your gift to make an impact in our work, see below highlights from our FOURTH QUARTER 2020 NEWSLETTER celebrating our progress in the field, with our finances, and as an innovative organization. ***OF COURSE, if you prefer to view the full newsletter, click on the link above or HERE.

 Fieldwork

• We published the English version of our e-book "Narrativas”, the fruit from our innovative storytelling initiative produced with crowdfunds from GlobalGiving (GG). Learn more about this work here.

• PSYDEH continues to promote and support women’s participation in late-October electoral processes in four indigenous municipalities. Our short-film on this work will be released in the 1^st quarter of 2021.

• We finish planning for our 2021-2022 multi-mechanism program. Reflecting local indigenous women feedback, this is our most ambitious fieldwork ever, produced in collaboration with these women to help their families and communities rebuild during and after COVID-19. See this news item for program details, this account on our novel leadership-training planned for our women partner’s network, and this dispatch on one of the mechanisms we call “Bordamos juntos”, innovated with our new partner Ayuda Mutua CDMX.

Financial Well-being

• PSYDEH is thrilled to be awarded a game-changing grant from GlobalGiving’s Coronavirus Relief Fund.

• Since September, we have launched new pieces of our seven-resource stream strategy: our (1) volunteer collaborator’s program, and (2) corporate partnerships program, including one of its key elements, (3) our cause marketing initiative. For details about volunteer collaborator activities, contact Carmen Grab. For more on corporate partners and cause marketing, contact Damon Taylor and Hannah Swenson respectively.

• Our pro bono global law firm partner Hogan Lovells CDMX, in collaboration with TrustLaw (a project of the Thomson Reuters Foundation), helps us to make needed progress in becoming an outfit with 100% financial transparency. Learn more here. 

Organization Progress

• India-based Chezuba helps PSYDEH to link with professionals from across the globe, including employees of the Tata Group, one of the largest Indian multinational conglomerates with 100,000+  workers across the world.

• PSYDEH’s majority-paid field team grows. Necessitated by local indigenous women’s demands and our 2020-2022 COVID-19 recovery project, PSYDEH launches our nine-person, majority-indigenous women field Corps. It operates out of our first satellite-field office “Casa Siempre Viva”, named after indigenous women partner’s regional organization with the same name.

• For over a year now, PSYDEH strategically uses our voice as a community-led development leader to promote more equitable access to resources through online global crowdfunding platforms like USA-UK-based GlobalGiving (GG). Learn more about PSYDEH’s evolving role here, and our novel model for working in this area here. To see the indirect impact of our nudging, and to learn more about GG's new community-led development research initiative, see this article and this report. 

Links:

• Search for us on Facebook
• Search for us on LinkedIn
• Search for us on Instagram

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

• After five months sans activities, we have restarted our seed fund project and a new project around COVID-19 with activities like (a) producing a reliable information series, (b) providing direct food assistance to 100 families through a social-enterprise action, and (c) training on natural resources as local food security.

FINANCES

• We just completed a brand optimization initiative, including myriad website changes, e.g., a new corporate partnerships page, and launching three new short videos for Facebook and Instagram. This work already yields more crowdfunding success as well as in-kind gifts from Microsoft and Google.

ORGANIZATION 

• PSYDEH can now hire foreign workers without residency, thanks to hard work in collaboration with the global law firm Hogan Lovells CDMX and TrustLaw (a project of the Thomson Reuters Foundation). We continue to work with Hogan on our tax-deductible status in Mexico, among other matters. 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PROGRESS IN OUR 3rd QUARTER NEWSLETTER

• ENGLISH
• SPANISH

LOOKING FORWARD

Our 4th quarter report will celebrate progress with our

• "COVID-19" & "Seed Fund" fieldwork,
• new "global collaborator" program, and
• corporate partnership wins.

Links:

• Search for us on Facebook
• Search for us on LinkedIn
• Search for us on Instagram

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

• release our 186-page e-book with women partners' stories and portraits
• plan a COVID-19 project to offer short-and medium-term help to women and communities
• publish our 2019 annual report

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've received permission from these women to use their names; 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: 

• progress with our "Seed Fund" activity
• end-of-2020 strategic planning finished early with partner involvement
• more GlobalGiving wins.

Links:

• Search for us on Facebook
• Search for us on LinkedIn
• Search for us on YouTube