Why We Partner
PSYDEH’s sustainable growth in a hostile Mexican funding climate is based on our outside-the-box thinking when it comes to how we define a “resource”. One increasingly important resource is corporate partnerships, a unique example of which is our multi-phased relationship with Zoom, a USA company and the global leader in video communications.
Where We Focus Our Efforts
Our alliance started with a significant financial donation awarded by Zoom’s Latinx employee resource group Somos (ERG Somos), as well as their arranging an in-kind donation of fifteen Pro account licenses. It continued with multiple virtual information sharing sessions, one of which related to our being selected as one of four nonprofits across the world to participate in their Zoom Cares pro bono initiative in collaboration with USA-based nonprofit Team4Tech (T4T).
With T4T, twelve Zoom employees attended four Design for Impact Workshops (DIW) sessions. Their charge was to organize into three teams and present different actionable ideas to PSYDEH around our business challenge: “How might we utilize technology to share PSYDEH’s stories and to promote the voices of Indigenous women in Hidalgo, Mexico?” After receiving three different actionable ideas we’ll pursue in the coming years, Zoom went above and beyond what others have done.
With guidance from T4T, Zoom committed six DIW participants to invest work time over a subsequent 10-week period to implement the one actionable idea PSYDEH felt was most ripe for immediate use: an e-commerce website that will be folded into 2022-2024 programming to organize Indigenous female artisan leaders into a network of cooperatives we call Sierra Madre Network. See this article to learn more details about our multi-phased partnership.
Why it is a Win-win Partnership
Zoom wins in at least three ways. First, Zoom ERG Somos’s investment in PSYDEH reflects the company’s unique commitment to its Latinx and Hispanic staff while showing its and novel perspective that corporate social responsibility should include multiple phases integrating financial and in-kind inputs. Second, their employees are given the opportunity to collaborate with peers across their remote offices while making a generative impact; Zoom’s investment will yield multiple returns over many years. Third, the multi-phased model Zoom innovates with PSYDEH is a proof-of-concept ripe to be replicated, supported, and promoted.
PSYDEH wins a multi-phased commitment from a global technology company that helps marginalized women and their underserved rural areas to develop the technology-based tools needed to win from the digital economy in 2022 and beyond. Zoom’s choosing PSYDEH led to T4T choosing us too, with their recently committing to a long-term partnership focused on integrating contextually appropriate technology solutions in our community-led development work. Third, Zoom helps us inch closer to our goal of becoming a more sustainable operation with progress around four different resource streams: (1-2) receiving needed financial support and valuable donated in-kind goods and professional services, which (3) help us to empower women entrepreneurs to organize themselves into cooperatives, a story we can use to partner with more global donors, as well as (4) these women’s cooperatives have the digital platform they need to supply national and global demand for local-sourced, artisan goods.
