Build Cooperatives with Indigenous Women in Mexico

Hello from PSYDEH! We hope this finds you well—it's hard to believe that we’re already nearing the close of the year. Every November PSYDEH holds a regional conference we call our Encuentro, in which we come together to celebrate the year’s accomplishments and prepare for another year of progress, because we know the work is never done. This November, we will hold the 8th iteration of this gathering, and while we are in the midst of preparations as a team, I also like to take this time to reflect on all that we have achieved over the past months.

Cooperative accomplishments

After many years in the works, in September we launched our first-ever online sales platform for the Red Sierra Madre network of cooperatives, linking our women partners directly with supporters and consumers all over the world. This is a huge step for our women partners, many of whom have long had to rely on intermediaries to resell their goods. You can browse and shop the site here. In addition, to help explain the complex economics and history of bordados in the region, one of our recent global collaborators wrote a fascinating story on different embroidery techniques, beyond the beloved Tenango for which the region is known. We hope you find it informative and enlightening!

Women-led cooperatives also continue to work on a variety of important initiatives that make their communities stronger and encourage local problem-solving: PSYDEH has joined forces with Sembrando Vida to start providing workshops on gender equality and community engagement to men who work in the rural agricultural sector. This project is a crucial step towards involving men in changing gender paradigms in the region, and we are lucky to be doing it with a strong local partner.

Civic engagement work continues

Following a historic election in Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum has now taken office as the first female president of the country, and local and state level electoral transitions are in process throughout the region. PSYDEH led a regional, non-partisan elections monitoring initiative that trained over 60 women as electoral observers, and continues our civic engagement work with the support of the SHE WINS Rapid Response Fund, a joint initiative of the U.S. State Department and Search for Common Ground. Program activities center on updating and promoting a regional citizen agenda, and will involve supporting women to engage with newly elected officials through the end of the year.

We've also been sharing our work and breaking boundaries as we do it: PSYDEH field lead Citlali Aparicio Estrada was the youngest member and one of only two women who spoke on a panel hosted by Mexico's non-partisan national elections institute (INE) about her community's experience participating as observers and ensuring the free and fair participation of vulnerable populations in the voting process. Citlali noted "I was told by a teacher in college, 'You have to learn to walk in the field, to really understand the needs of your community, but you also have to learn to speak in the institutions and present these needs.'" We look forward to seeing Citlali speak at more insitutions in the future!

Welcoming our new field coordinator

August was a month of transition at PSYDEH as we bid farewell to our dear colleague Alejandra, who for the past 2+ years has been leading our work in the field with love, creativity, and a deep commitment to creating lasting change for local communities. Ale has left to pursue a Master's degree in Rural Sociology, where she will continue working on issues that affect rural women in the Sierra Otomí-Tepehua and around Mexico. We will miss her dearly, but can't wait to see what she will do in this new chapter.

With Ale's departure, we are also excited to welcome a new field coordinator to the PSYDEH family. Miranda Carreón is a sociologist and sexuality educator with a Masters degree in social psychology. She is passionate about women's studies and community development and education, and has dedicated her career to the implementation of food security, financial education, leadership, and women's empowerment projects in more than 90 communities of origin across Mexico. She has specific experience promoting gender equality in educational spaces, accompanying teachers, administrators, and community leaders in the design of pedagogical materials that promote comprehensive sexual education, dignified menstruation, and gender equality. She brings all of this experience to her field work with PSYDEH, and we know she will be a valuable member of our local, women-led team.

A personal note for our GlobalGiving donors

PSYDEH friends and family, whether you have walked with us for years or just joined our effort last week, we want to thank you for what you’ve contributed to our organization, allowing us to continue to expand and deepen our work alongside the women of the Otomí-Tepehua region. Our field work is always evolving in new and exciting ways, and with that we continue to evolve our organizational capacity, while remaining rooted in our values of intentional transparency, creative impact, and sustainability. To this end, we'd like to share a few big organizational wins, which allow us to keep doing our work to the best of our ability. We hope you'll consider them your wins as well.

• This year saw some of our biggest investments from corporate partners to date: valued allies Wise, Viasat, and  Honnold Foundation all renewed and increased their flexible funding contributions to PSYDEH, allowing us to continue to build out our digital resource centers and tech programming through 2025. We are also looking forward to a two-phased onsite visit that will allow Viasat employee volunteers to work on specific PSYDEH field initiatives, with phase one occuring in November and phase two taking place next year. In addition, we look forward to our second round of parntership with the Looking Out Foundation and Brandi Carlile's Girls' Just Wanna Weekend Festival again in early 2025.
• We were also thrilled to partner with new organizations and funders this year: Search for Common Ground's Rapid Response Fund supports our civic engagment work, and we were recently awarded a grant in the category of Open and Free Internet from LACNIC's Frida program, which supports "Latin American and Caribbean projects, initiatives, and solutions that contribute to the consolidation of a global, open, stable, and secure Internet."
• Lastly, though not as glamorous, we know the importance of continuously improving our internal systems and capacity and have made signficant progress in two areas this year: we are launching a new internal financial tracking and reporting system thanks to a year-long collaboration with Creatura, a Mexican non-profit consulting firm, and were thrilled to achieve the highest (optimum) level of Accreditation in Instutionality and Transparency (AIT) from CEMEFI, the Mexican Center for Philanthropy. 

We hope that you can share in our November celebrations from afar, knowing that we are deeply grateful for your support and all that it is has helped us accomplish. We will be back in touch in the new year!

Wishing you a restful and reflective Día de Muertos, Thanksgiving, and holiday season,

Katie & equipo PSYDEH

Dear GlobalGiving allies,

The end of June marks six incredibly busy, productive, and impactful months here at PSYDEH and we’re here and eager to share all about it!

NEW WEBSITE & NEW IMPACT REPORT

First things first, we’ve officially launched our new website and our 2023 annual impact report this month! Check them out and let us know what you think. We’re always looking for meaningful ways to promote our organizational values of creative impact and transparency and to share our rural, Indigenous community-led development work with the world, and we’re very proud of all the efforts of our team and Global Collaborator volunteers for making this great work happen. Plus, be on the lookout for our Sierra Madre cooperative network’s official e-commerce platform launching on our site before the end of summer. We’ll let you know exactly when ;)

TEAM RETREAT & VIRTUAL WORKSHOPS

Since we last connected with you in February, we hosted a lively and enriching team retreat in our offices in Tenango de Doria (essentially a productive 3-day sleepover) to start unpacking 2024 and our 5-year strategic plan. Programming-wise, we celebrated our first fully virtual workshop series on Indigenous women’s rights with our cooperative network thanks in part to our transformative partnerships with Viasat, Team4Tech, and the Honnold Foundation.

On the ground, our team helped cooperative members log in from their homes and PSYDEH’s digital resource centers to engage in the workshop together as a mighty cohort of 60 rural and Indigenous women across the Sierra Otomí-Tepehua-Nahua. We were incredibly moved by the workshop series and also by the power of technology to bring us all together to learn, share, debate, and grow.

Hosting our workshops virtually also meant that our team was able to avoid the standard 3-4-5-6 hour commutes that can be required to deliver in-person workshops in the rural communities where we work. This is a reality we couldn’t have dreamed of years ago and is a radical demonstration of the impact of our Tech For All program.

TOURISM PILOT: RUTA RED SIERRA MADRE

Is there anything more special than sharing, learning, enjoying new experiences, meeting new people, and seeing the world in new ways? These tenants are fundamental to PSYDEH’s regenerative tourism pilot project that officially launched this spring in collaboration with Lynda Martinez del Campo at Understand Mexico.

In April, our team welcomed and led fourteen guests from Mexico City to Acaxochitlán, a major milestone of women’s leadership and empowerment for our team and our cooperative network. More details on the next phase of this project coming soon!

INTERNET UPGRADES

“The most humanistic part of activism is the efforts in rural communities. Today the Narciso Mendoza Bilingual Primary School in Piedra Ancha has satellite Internet!” - Salma Sinaí Soto Montes, PSYDEH Field Team Leader, San Bartolo Tutotepec

With support from our transformative partner Viasat and their dedicated team, we were able to install internet systems and ensure the advancement of digital inclusion and connectivity at PSYDEH’s new digital resource centers in the isolated communities of Piedra Ancha, San Pablo el Grande, Santa Inés, and San Esteban. Truly a major physical and logistical feat! These new digital resource centers will also support women partners, local schools, groups, and communities to access free internet, communicate more easily with family and friends, advance community development and entrepreneurial projects, access important digital tools and resources, and join PSYDEH’s virtual workshop series.

“We finished the work on April 30 (Children's Day in Mexico), an important "gift" for our women partners, who, to tell the truth, looked like little girls they were so excited!” - Alejandra Ríos Perez, PSYDEH Field Team Coordinator

ELECTION SEASON

In June, Mexico had one of the largest electoral processes in its history. In addition to electing a president for the next six years, deputies, senators, governors, and municipal presidents were also elected throughout the country.

A few months before the election, we were thrilled to receive news that our latest civic engagement initiative, Nosotras Decidimos [We Decide], received funding from the Support Fund for Electoral Observation (FAOE 2024). In a nutshell, Nosotras Decidimos focuses on empowering rural women with the information they need to make informed decisions and actively participate as citizens and local leaders in the electoral process and beyond the duration of the elections as they learn to advocate and construct proposals for elected administrations in favor of their demands as members of local cooperatives.

Following the facilitation of an official INE (National Election Institute) training, 32 members of the PSYDEH network served as election observers in 4 rural municipalities in the state of Hidalgo on Sunday, June 2. We shot an entire documentary on it. More on that soon! A historic day in many ways (shout out to our first women president!) – this process also served as a strong example of the power of civic education in action. Beyond a vote, our team and women partners learned and exercised their rights and are all active models of female leadership in their communities.

From here, PSYDEH will continue leading our Nosotras Decidimos workshop series inspiring new levels of civic participation throughout the rest of 2024 and ensuring that a women-drafted Citizen Agenda is prepared by the fall to present and activate locally as new municipal government officials begin to take office.

Congratulations to all of our women partners for their commitment to democratic processes, citizen empowerment, and women’s leadership in this year’s elections and beyond.

LOOKING FORWARD

Wrapping our ninth workshop of the year this week, focused on plant medicine and self-care, PSYDEH’s team and women partners look ahead to many big opportunities and challenges in the months to come. First, we’re eager to continue developing our organization’s replicable model plan, wherein we bring our work, values, and programming to new communities in Hidalgo and beyond. More on that soon! We’re also coordinating exciting new, and partnerships (shout-out to COLPOS, Onora, PACMYC, Cemefi, Viasat, and more!) while advancing steadily in this year’s Sierra Madre Network Leadership School, Tech For All programming, and other ambitious initiatives. Never a dull moment!

We truly appreciate your steadfast support as our team and our women partners continue to grow and our systems change work advancing social, economic, and gender equality continues to blossom and fruit across Hidalgo. The processoooo continues.

We’ll be in touch with more updates in the coming months (prepare yourselves for that cooperative e-commerce store announcement!) but, until then, we wish you and your communities a beautiful and enriching summertime.

Saludos y abrazos,
Team PSYDEH

<3

Links:

• PSYDEH's 2023 impact report
• PSYDEH's Instagram page
• PSYDEH's new website