Comunalia Will Monitor the Vital Signs of Communities in Mexico

Monterrey, Nuevo León, March 14, 2021.— Comunalia launched the pilot program Signos Vitales pilot program in Mexico, an initiative through which we will seek to identify areas of opportunity and strengths in the communities where our partner foundations are located in order to promote actions that improve the common good.

Signos Vitales, known as Vital Signs in English, was founded in 2001 through an initiative of the Toronto Community Foundation. It is currently coordinated by Community Foundations of Canada and is implemented in 85 communities around the world. Mexico participates under the leadership of Comunalia.

Ten years ago, with the founding of the Alliance of Community Foundations of Mexico, we developed a Mexican model for community foundations based on the premise of identifying the wealth that exists within communities so that, collectively—together with their residents and members—we could harness those resources to spur community development.

Today, the Signos Vitales initiative is a tool that brings together and organizes the wealth of knowledge and social information scattered among the various stakeholders in a community, thereby helping community foundations fulfill some of their key roles: gaining in-depth knowledge of their community; connecting and integrating stakeholders; and prioritizing and aligning strategies so they can act immediately when necessary, while also working toward long-term impact.

To achieve these goals, Comunalia, as part of the Comunalia HUB program, will support three community foundations each year to implement the Signos Vitales program with support from the Inter-American Foundation and the C.S. Mott Foundation, through the collection of qualitative and quantitative data from their communities.

In this way, the tool will provide first-hand insight into the “vital signs” of the communities where Comunalia’s partner community foundations are located, enabling them to strategically improve their decision-making processes based on the findings of the reports. 

It will also help identify and establish partnerships between foundations and various stakeholders—including the public and private sectors, civil society organizations, and grassroots groups—to align with and enhance the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the benefit of their communities. 

Learn more about Signos Vitales here.