Psicologia y Derechos Humanos PSYDEH A.C.
Organization Details
PSYDEH empowers rural Mexican Indigenous women (and men) with training in citizen leadership and micro-project production while helping them to organize to lead the rights-based, bottom-up sustainable development of their own communities. Our four work strategies are:
STRENGTHEN CITIZEN PARTICIPATION, e.g., use women-led leader and rights-based training to drive citizen demands for homegrown solutions to problems.
IMPROVE HUMAN SECURITY, e.g., link local partners to, and help them develop their own, pilot-projects for improving quality of life.
SUPPORT DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE, e.g., educate citizens on rights, laws, decision-making and collective organizing strategies they need to increase their influence in Mexico’s democracy, including through their own network of problem-solving civil society organizations.
BUILD COMMUNAL RESILIENCE, e.g., build social capital between and among urban and rural, multi-cultural and-ethnic partners at cultural and geographic boundary-crossing events.
Impact Story
We confront THE major regional challenge — indigenous women are not supported as leaders capable of solving problems.
The 45 communities we serve sit in the 1st, 3rd, 9th and 22nd most marginalized municipalities in Hidalgo, Mexico--San Bartolo Tutotepec, Huehuetla, Tenango de Doria and Acaxochitlan. Here, coordination of basic services is insufficient and frustrated by a top-down approach. No state body empowers indigenous communities. No regional citizen governing structure exists. Local efforts are insufficient. NGOs face a 100% cut in federal funding in 2019. Isolated people don't see themselves as part of a larger intercultural fabric. Despite being a majority, women civic participation is nominal while gender violence, abandonment, and discrimination predominate.
For PSYDEH, solutions to these challenges lie with outside-the-box NGO thinking and bottom-up self-governance co-led by indigenous women. Indeed, we build diverse income streams and support women as partners with our scalable program model around a lack of (i) knowledge and skills they need to build organizations and projects, and (ii) opportunity to organize across cultures to innovate and negotiate solutions.
For example, Marisela, 2013 indigenous rights’ workshop participant, wanted more development in her community. With PSYDEH, and between 2014-2019, she ran for mayor, sits on the board of her local NGO and leads the regional NGO, promotes our work nationally and links women with micro-enterprise projects. By design, women like Marisela co-direct project implementation and sustain progress beyond our work. More generally, PSYDEH has educated 2000+ citizens. A subset of these folks has created their own intercultural network of organizations and cooperative (Network) to implement their unprecedented Development Agenda. They tell their own stories, critique government development plans, sell goods nationally, and benefit from or help to lead 22 local projects to make an immediate impact in the Region.
