OUR WORK IS NEEDED

OUR WORK IS NEEDED

The Region’s citizens need our work. 83% of women leaders surveyed state that they NEED training on leadership skills and how to collaborate to make an impact.

Mexico needs our program. Poverty rates and wage inequality are high and may be increasing despite a rising social development budget. It would take 120 years to reduce the gap between the poorest and the richest in Mexico. Development planning in Mexico clearly needs to change.

The global debate on how to reduce income inequality and to defeat poverty needs our work. 

William Easterly, a respected American development economist, argues that successful sustainable development of poor communities must be bottom-up oriented, forward thinking and founded on individual economic and political rights (The Tyranny of Experts). 

Easterly’s “Free Development” requires free individuals exercising such rights freely. 

This leads to a successful problem-solving system that encourages broad community involvement and consistent, respectful engagement between citizens and government.

PSYDEH Non Profit NGO for Women in Mexico Our Work is Needed v002 compressor

Yet, top-down development initiatives implemented by “outside experts,” be they from a Mexico City or foreign, continue to be the dominant development theory (see The Wilson Center 2015 Report as an example). These efforts are based on an illusion: poverty is a technical problem amenable to technical solutions best implemented by outside actors.

Technical problems of the poor, such as food insecurity, illiteracy or inadequate access to potable water, are real and demand attention from those on the ground as well as national and international experts. But, they are only symptoms of poverty.

PSYDEH también sueña | PSYDEH Learn

The root cause of poverty, AND of growing social and economic inequality between the rich and poor, in democratic Mexico (and countries like the USA) is something different. It is a miseducated citizenry unaware of their potential human development reality, their civic responsibilities and their inherent abilities, as individuals and in economic and political rights-based collaborations. 

Our poor women partners want to learn and work. They want to make smart demands of government. They want to use their economic and political rights to create their own solutions to problems, i.e., to drive their own development.

Another truth. They face myriad challenges to achieving their wishes.

Our multi-year, forward-looking, citizen empowerment program is designed to meet their demands. We strengthen their leader capacities and understanding of civic virtues and the civil society networks they want and need.

Moreover, we accompany them in the difficult early period when challenges are the most daunting. And, while just a small Mexican NGO, our model is designed to scale countrywide and beyond to other republics like the USA. 

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