Support Grassroots Earthquake Recovery in Mexico

Dear supporters,

At Fondo Semillas we are thrilled to share with you our accomplishments for the month of October for the project “Women Rebuilding their Communities”. During the 10^th, 11^th and 12^th of October, two representatives of each grantee organization participated in a Group Strengthening Meeting in Mexico City. Several members of other organizations, such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Appleseed Mexico, Las Reinas Chulas, Ruta Cívica and Fundación Cántaro Azul, facilitated the meeting and provided training in their specific area of expertise.

During the meeting, the grantee organizations were able to share their experiences and challenges and receive administrative and technical skills to improve their projects and avoid future risks. They were also able to gain helpful tools in administration, communication and participatory methods to apply in their own communities. Some of the reflections and conclusions were:

“The threat of a future disaster continues, but the rebuilding process is an opportunity to organize ourselves, take precautions and be alerted; to improve and not be as vulnerable as we used to be.” - Mónica, from 06600 Plataforma Vecinal y Observatorio de la Colonia Juárez.

“One of the barriers to the reconstruction process is the lack of funds. Sometimes, open calls for funding are released, but with endless and unreachable requirements for the women that work in the communities. And usually, the available funds are meant for the reconstruction of houses, but not for the rebuilding of the community. There are very few resources such as the ones provided by Fondo Semillas.” - Cecilia, from Unión de Pueblos de Morelos.

We are also happy to share with you some of the successes of the groups:

• Una Mano para Oaxaca has been painting murals in the community highlighting some of the traditional trades and increasing the pride of belonging in the community members.
• El Sueño de Huejotengo has already imparted mason and electricity workshops to women. They have also trained themselves to recover the traditional custom of painting houses with mud, so that the newly rebuilt houses by the government look prettier and the community looks closer to what it used to look like.

We are so grateful for your trust in Fondo Semillas and your support of Mexico's rebuilding process. Together, we can help Mexico be strong again. We’ll keep you updated on how these projects move forward and we are happy to answer any questions you may have.

Dear supporters,

We are happy to share with you new updates on the progress of the “Women Rebuilding their Communities” Fund to support long-term recovery projects in communities affected by the earthquakes in September 2017. Since our last update, 25 organizations were chosen to carry out reconstruction projects in their communities in Guerrero, Mexico City, Morelos, Oaxaca and Puebla. If you want to read the full list of chosen organizations, you can follow this link.

These organizations are working on varied projects ranging from building a community center, carrying out psico-emotional support workshops for victims with PTSD from the earthquakes, cleaning a river and finding new ways to reactivate the local economy. The women leaders in these organizations have told us that they want to be strong communities with economic activities so that they can support their families and rebuild their homes.

"Eleven months after the earthquake, there is still so much more to do: we need to improve the soil, rebuild with local materials, build ecological bathrooms, and reactivate the economy to help the women that lost their traditional comixcal ovens. We are now imparting crafts and trades workshops, sewing and ironworks classes, and workshops on women's rights. We believe that the most important aspect of the rebuilding efforts is the rebuilding of women's self-esteem and empowerment,” explains one of the members of the MONAPAKÜY team.

We are so grateful for your trust in Fondo Semillas and your support of Mexico's rebuilding process. Together, we can help Mexico be strong again. We’ll keep you updated on how these projects move forward and we are happy to answer any questions you may have.

We are happy to share an update regarding “Women Rebuilding their Communities” Fund to support long-term recovery projects in communities affected by the earthquakes in September 2017. Since our last update, the impact of the lack of government response continues to be felt, and Fondo Semillas and other key actors are beginning the process of implementing medium and long-term projects in the region.

The open call for proposals from groups in the affected states closed on April 15th. We received 85 proposals of projects to be carried out in Oaxaca (39), Mexico City (14), Morelos (13), Puebla (10), Chiapas (6), Estado de Mexico (1), Guerrero (1) and Campeche (1). The primary themes highlighted in the projects include: emotional support to affected populations, rebuilding homes and local economies, and women’s leadership in the rebuilding process.

The selection committee, composed of experts in reconstruction from institutions such as Oxfam Mexico and the United Nations Development Programme, women from the affected communities, and strategic local organizations, gathered to conduct an initial evaluation of the organizations and the proposals received. There were several key selection criteria used, including that the groups must be led by women from the areas directly affected by the earthquakes, and that groups must have a work plan that addresses systemic change. Given the fact that elections will be held in Mexico on July 1^st, it was also important to ensure that the selected groups were not linked to any political parties.

After 3 rounds of analysis and deliberation, a final selection was carried out on May 21, and the 25 groups chosen to receive funding will be announced at the end of the month.           

We are so grateful for your trust in Fondo Semillas and your support of Mexico's rebuilding process. We will be reporting soon with the final results of the grantee selection and initial activities of these projects! 

The Women Rebuilding their Communities program was designed as a long-term response to the destruction following the earthquakes that occured in southern and central Mexico in September 2017. Now after the immediate aid has ended and much of the attention has been refocused elsewhere, we are getting ready to fully implement our reconstruction program, based on a complete stakeholder mapping and needs assemssment with concrete data and information from the affected areas.

In order to understand more fully the situation in the affected states, in December 2017 we collaborated with the organization Ambulante to initiate a mapping of the stakeholders and actors that are participating in reconstruction efforts in the country, as well as a needs assessment. This information will help us to define the most strategic way to use the resources and to support the communities.

This mapping is one of the most complete pictures of the situation available in the country, and we want to share some of the principal findings. If you want to learn more about the methodology that was used and see the complete results, click here.

• More than 450 actors participating in the reconstruction have been identified, and they have been classified in accordance with their area of influence and their thematic priorities. The list as of January 26^th can be downloaded here. This will continue to be updated, and the most up-to-date version can be requested by emailing: luz.rodea (@semillas.org.mx )
• 725 municipalities in nine states are in a state of disaster or emergency: Oaxaca, Chiapas, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Morelos, Guerrero, Mexico City, the State of Mexico, and Veracruz.

• Seven of those states (all but Tlaxcala and Veracruz) have been declared in a state of emergency by the government disaster relief agency (FONDEN), but there are 50 municipalities that are in the categories of emergency and extraordinary emergency that are not receiving support (all of these are in the state of Chiapas).
• According to the available information, there are 60,302 housing units that have been completely destroyed, but there is no information about the total number of people affected.

• The support for the immediate emergency is already being withdrawn from the affected communities.
• The existing reconstruction plans are limited to housing. There is not support for initiatives such as economic revitalization, food security, prevention of future natural disasters, rehabilitation of water and sanitation systems, rebuilding social cohesion, etc.
• Only a small percentage of the resources have been provided directly to grassroots groups and organizations, even though those groups have a fundamental role in ensuring that the reconstruction initiatives are successful.
• Women are leading the reconstruction activities, whether through groups that they already belonged to before the earthquake, or because they organized themselves and started to work following the tragedy.

Next steps