Projects

With our projects we intend to generate alternatives and develop capacities for social development:

Training in development and social policy

Capacity building for development

Research, networking and sharing valuable experiences


Training in development and social policy
We offer a variety of training programs for civil servants and NGO staff, in different formats and with different collaborators.

• Since 2003 we have been offering jointly with the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, CIDE (Center of Economic Research and Teaching), the Certificate Course in “Development and Social Policy in Mexico”, currently with three generations of alumni. Among them there are civil servants, legislative advisors, academics, and NGO staff to whom we have awarded scholarships. The duration of this course is three and a half months, starting at the end of February, and it is designed to accommodate full-time work schedules.

• As part of the Certificate Course for Professionalizing Civil Society Organizations funded by INDESOL, we teach the Module of Strategies for Lobbying and Advocacy in Public Policy in 11 cities throughout the country, to close to 350 organizations. For this we have designed innovative materials to convey public policy concepts to civil society organizations. These materials help familiarize them with the dilemmas and the tools involved in the decision making processes, present them with different options for lobbying and advocating on public policy issues, and provide practical exercises to guide them in the creation of their own advocacy plan.

• We also offer short courses tailored to the needs of participants on "Development and Public Policy” to broaden their knowledge, perspective and analytical abilities, and thus contribute to the professional performance of the work of the public and social sectors.

• We collaborate with different Universities and higher education Centers for the Social Sciences by teaching the course of Development and Social Policy in their undergraduate and graduate programs. To this date, we have collaborated with El Colegio de México, CIDE and ITESM-CCM.

• We started a pilot project called “Youth building capacities for social development”. This project aims to select and train young people with the purpose of promoting a higher commitment and social leadership that strongly influence their life choices and professional careers. On the one hand, the idea is to train new generations at a crucial moment in their lives with practical tools for social development, promoting at the same time constructive and conciliatory proposals. On the other hand, the project promotes sharing experiences and knowledge that can be used to create new partnerships and collaboration projects.

• Alternativas has collaboration agreements with UNAM, El Colegio de México and ITESM-CCM to allow students from these institutions to carry out their social service work and internships in the organization. Our association offers courses and professional opportunities to these students, for we view these processes as a way of training them in the field.

Through these projects, we are working on the professionalization of mid- and higher level government employees who make decisions regarding social policies in different parts of the country, and we are encouraging the participation of civil society organizations in this process, working with the government for the public good.

Capacity building for development
Having researched supply and demand for capacity building services, we conceptualized our own model and approach, with the intention of helping civil society organizations and donors do a better job in terms of impact, planning, and evaluation.

• Alternativas considers it necessary to increase the capacities of these kinds of organizations to improve the quality of their work, in the areas of:
  1. Strategic planning.
  2. Planning, implementation and evaluation of social projects.
  3. Performance evaluation and social impact evaluation.
  4. Participatory evaluation and monitoring.
  5. Designing procedures to attract donors, helping direct philanthropic resources in a more effective way towards social development causes.

• We developed the handbook Building your organization in 16 steps, in collaboration with the Mexican Youth Institute, to guide youth groups through legal incorporation procedures. Occasionally, and according to demand, we offer workshops and advise groups on this topic.

• Currently, our efforts aim to build the capacity of organizations to influence public policy, through our project Broadening public spaces. The goal is to train them through workshops, courses, and long- and short-term consulting projects to develop successful advocacy work. The project also intends to prepare case studies of successful efforts, to publish a handbook for planning strategies in this field of work and to promote the exchange of ideas through a web-based discussion forum and the organization of a seminar with the participation of international experts.

• Thanks to the initiative of one of our interns, we are developing a participatory evaluation and monitoring project of the Oportunidades Program in the municipality of Oaxaca. The goals of the project are to strengthen the participation of youth in the alleviation of poverty, to improve coordination between the program and the local government, and to develop a participatory methodology that allows the community to develop ownership of these monitoring processes to improve public policy. This project obtained an award in the First “Youth for a Mexico without Poverty”, an event organized by the World Bank.

• Some of the projects we have provided capacity building services to in the areas of planning, evaluation and program design are:
  1. Evaluation of the Community Foundations Groups for Synergos Institute and the Mexican Center of Philanthropy (CEMEFI).
  2. Institutional design for a Center of Development Studies for ITESO, A.C.
  3. Systematization and evaluation of the project “Local Power” of Fundar – Centro de Análisis e Investigación A.C.

Research, networking and sharing valuable experiences

• Since 2004, we are conducting research about the regulatory framework for civil society organizations and the institutional and coordination challenges facing new legislation to encourage their activities (Ley de Fomento a las Actividades de las OSCs). In our view, federal legislation should be coordinated with public policies implemented by a myriad government actors, both at the federal and state levels, that regulate and promote nonprofit activities in Mexico. While we agree that it is fundamental to regulate access to public resources, we believe that legislation should also consider the framework and tax incentives that influence the growth of private resources devoted to philanthropy and social development.

• We intend to develop a series of social policy Notebooks, presenting instructive texts in a simple language on subjects such as “Concepts and strategies for poverty alleviation”, “Participation in promoting social development” and research on the supply and demand for capacity building services among civil society organizations in Mexico. The goal of these Notebooks is to promote reflection on social work and to close the gap between the knowledge in the field and the practitioners that work in it, either from government or civil society.

• Since October 2003, our website publishes documents, and news and trends on social policy. We have generated web based discussion fora and quarterly newsletters, with the goal of linking participants from different projects.

• We have our own information system, which helps us generate, store, systematize and retrieve information on projects and contacts. Our data bases include more than 1 000 contacts in organizations and foundations, civil servants from the federal, state and municipal levels, international cooperation agencies, and researchers.

• We have our own document center and virtual library on relevant topics such as development, social policy, planning, evaluation, participatory methodologies, capacity building, public policy, local government, and regional development.