Mexican Fund Aims to Make Philanthropy a Tool of the Poor as Well as the Rich

Widespread frustration with the limitations of conventional philanthropy in many countries has prompted experimentation with new models.

Those new approaches, some observers are predicting, will transform grant making in the new century.

In Mexico, for example, social activists have been working for decades to improve the lives of the country’s poorest citizens. But many of their efforts have been fragmentary — limited in scope or geography and poorly coordinated with similar or complementary activities elsewhere in the country.

Four years ago, 60 grassroots activists joined forces to create a new kind of philanthropy, one that they hoped would not only reinforce their individual projects but also attract more political and financial support to progressive causes.

The result was the Vamos Foundation, which is committed to redefining the role of philanthropy in Mexico. No longer need philanthropy be chiefly a mechanism whereby affluent families paternalistically share some of their wealth with their favorite charities. It can also become a tool that the poor can use to take greater control of their lives.

“In Mexico, we have had a very polarized society,” notes Javier Vargas Mendoza, president of Vamos, which is based in Mexico City. Sharp divisions persist between the rich and the poor, city dwellers and peasants, he says. And poor rural peasants have realized relatively few benefits from conventional philanthropy.

“Generally speaking, foundations in Mexico are established by a family with an inheritance, so they have a great deal of [financial] capital already,” observes Mr. Vargas. Vamos, by contrast, started with very little money but with decades’ worth of experience among its founders in stimulating social change.

“Poverty needs to be overcome with the poor as protagonists” in their economic struggle rather than as the passive recipients of aid from outside their communities, Mr. Vargas declares. That philosophy is at the heart of the foundation’s operations.

The foundation — whose name means “Let’s go!” — is focusing its efforts on the poorest parts of Mexico, particularly the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. And rather than support isolated projects in a single field — a child-care center in this village, for example, and a health clinic in that one — it seeks to link various elements together to create vital communities.

Helping peasants learn new forms of organic agriculture is a worthy goal, for example, but is hardly sufficient, says Mr. Vargas. Farmers also need access to local savings and credit institutions as well as training in technical and administrative skills. A more robust market for their produce and other goods may also be needed, he adds, which could involve finding hotel chains willing to buy their coffee, for instance, or developing international outlets for Indian handicrafts.

“Our understanding is more holistic,” Mr. Vargas says. “We need to have an impact regionally in a more holistic way.”

The foundation awards grants for a wide range of projects, including organic vegetable gardening and flower cultivation, the production of traditional medicines, the manufacture and marketing of handicrafts, cancer screening, AIDS prevention, community organizing, and housing.

Not everyone is pleased that the foundation is upsetting the status quo by encouraging poor peasants to become more active in seeking a way out of poverty. But part of the foundation’s mission, its officials believe, is educating Mexican citizens about people on the margins of society and pricking their conscience to encourage a greater sense of responsibility for correcting longstanding social inequities.

To that end, the foundation is ready to collaborate with government, business, and other non-profit organizations, both in Mexico and abroad.

“We’re creating a magnet for the rest of society to be a participant in social processes in which we try to include the business sector,” Mr. Vargas says. Such efforts have produced some amazing juxtapositions, he says. One recent annual meeting, for example, featured a workshop involving lively debate among 20 peasants and 20 of the country’s wealthiest business executives.

Vamos has drawn support from a cross-section of corporations, religious organizations, intermediary charities, and foundations, including many based in the United States. Among them are the American Friends Service Committee, the Levi Strauss Foundation, Lutheran World Relief, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Synergos Institute, and Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

But the foundation has also tried to broaden its support within Mexico, at least in part so that it can decrease its dependence on foreign donors. Many nongovernmental organizations in Mexico receive nearly all of their money from outside the country, Mr. Vargas notes. The Vamos Foundation, by contrast, raises some 40 per cent of its $1-million annual budget from within the country — and seeks to steadily increase that share.

Foundations like Vamos are part of a worldwide citizens’ movement to help set the agenda for the next decade and beyond, says S. Bruce Schearer, president of the Synergos Institute, in New York. “There has been an explosion in the creation of grant-making foundations to support civil society,” Mr. Schearer notes. “Many of them express a self-starting philanthropy that doesn’t depend on people’s largesse.”

On the threshold of a new century, Vamos sees the role of philanthropy as going way beyond merely channeling donations to worthy recipients. “We want not only to transfer money, which doesn’t change the way things are,” says Mr. Vargas, “but to create new elements, new understanding, and new leadership, while bridging the gaps between sectors and between nations.”