Mexico

Our Work

Our approach in Mexico works to bring indigenous, rural and historically marginalized communities across the country to self-reliance. Our work focuses on four states — Chiapas, Oaxaca, Yucatán and Mexico City.

Self-reliance at the community level is measured by indicators that fall into seven distinct categories: leadership and governance, government cooperation, sustainable development, mindset shift, food security, women’s empowerment and revenue.

We facilitate the journey to self-reliance by working with elected leaders across all levels of government to recognize and support Indigenous communities. We elevate the voices of empowered leaders, especially women, to advocate for themselves and for the resources that they need—based on their own assessments and desires for their community. From our work to date, we have seen inspiring outcomes including: 

• Communities building a positive recognition of women’s public participation and acknowledgement of the historical inequity women have faced
• New relationships with municipal authorities that recognize the autonomy of the communities
• An organic “train the trainer” chain where women who have worked with The Hunger Project are training other women, creating new roles as leaders and providers

Current Focus Areas (2024)

• Entrepreneurship and Economic Autonomy for Indigenous Women (Eurofins): In Chiapas, Oaxaca and Yucatan we’re training elder Indigenous women entrepreneurs in transformative leadership, entrepreneurial mindset, feminist economy, and commercialization of Indigenous products . These elders will in turn train young Indigenous women entrepreneurs with ongoing support from THP, who will provide regular, community-based, hands-on support and leadership. We are also facilitating an intercultural, cross-pollination exchange with 20 Indigenous women leaders from Chiapas, Oaxaca and Yucatan. This exchange will concentrate on commercialization of crafts and expertise in forming successful cooperatives and culminate in support for 13 Indigenous women’s business initiatives and pop up stores for Indigenous womens’ crafts (textiles and embroidery) and agricultural products (corn, coffee) in a high commerce/tourism zone within each state. 
• Safe Spaces for Girls (Swedish Postcode Lottery): We aim to reduce the number of child marriages and increase the number of girls fulfilling their education in Oaxaca and Chiapas, two states in southern Mexico. Through this project -combine with some other actions-, since 2022 (the first time in Mexico), we have been consolidating our Indigenous and Rural Children and Youth Leadership Program, focusing on local advocacy through their voices. This powerful initiative has empowered over 351 indigenous girls and adolescents from Oaxaca and Chiapas who have presented an agenda favoring child, early, and forced marriages and unions (CEFMU) within the CSW framework due to the activation of 13 purple circles – Girls and adolescent safe spaces-, as a base for Locals Congress conversations. 
• Equitable and Meaningful Internet Access (Microsoft Airband and Accesibility): The Digital Basket project is a 12-month project designed to create equitable access to the internet and create digital inclusion for Indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico. 
• Catalyzing local democracy through Gender-Focused Community Led Development (Forum Civ): The project is focused on catalyse participatory local democracy in indigenous and/or rural municipalities in Mexico’s three states: Oaxaca, Chiapas and Yucatán.
• Participatory methodological design for a Policy route Care in Yucatan (German Cooperation for Development GIZ Agency -Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbei- in Mexico): The project aim to fostering self-reliant municipalities (SRM) through technical support for the development of a route towards the consolidation of a care system in the state of Yucatán.

• Ensuring Sustainable Nutrition for Mothers and Children Under Five (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): Local volunteer leaders are being trained in internationally recognized strategies for intervening in malnutrition: multiple micronutrient supplementation (MMS) and the Essential Nutrition Actions (ENAs). These two nutrition interventions are paired with water and sanitation (WASH) training to ensure health and nutrient absorption. We will apply our holistic, gender-focused, community-led approach to sustainable, self-reliant nutrition, across seven countries on three continents (Bangladesh, Benin, Mexico, Mozambique, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia.)
• Indigenizing Food Systems (Seattle International Foundation): Through the project of  Traditional regional plate: a Chiapas experience recovering traditional cuisines and practices  we are preserving and promoting the use of traditional, local-cultural cuisines and practices. This project seeks to promote the rescue of local knowledge, and biocultural values and, in combination with scientific evidence, to allow local adoption in the communities.
• Indigenous Women-Led Food Security Initiative (Citi Foundation): Engage women and men from three indigenous communities in Oaxaca and Chiapas in a training process to build durable food security and financial health for themselves, their families, and fellow community members.
• Eat Well Program (Guzman and Gomez): Reinforce local indigenous knowledge and build food sovereignty by sourcing nutrient-dense and completed diets from within indigenous territories. We have been create two new Eat Well Traditional Regional Plates (Costa in Spanish, and Los Altos in Spanish, and tsotsil – indigenous language) with cultural belonging and bio-cultural design based on the integration of scientific studies and local and traditional knowledge from Costa de Chiapas and Los Altos reaching 274 mothers and families from 18 communities in 5 municipalities in Los Altos de Chiapas and three municipalities on the Coast and Border with Guatemala.
• Equitable and Meaningful Internet Access (Microsoft Accesibility): Aiming primarily to complement the existing Microsoft program in Mexico, mainly adding disability inclusion landscape analysis of the project area and infrastructure upgrades to increase the accessibility of 3 CÓDICE (ICT centers) in 3 different municipalities in Chiapas.