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Vicente Arredondo Ramírez, is Vice President of Fundación Comunidad, A.C., in the state of Morelos. He holds a Ph .D. in Educational Planning from the University of Massachusetts in the United States. His work has focused on issues related to education and the participation of organized civil society in social assistance, advocacy, and development initiatives.
The unusual and unexpected health crisis we are experiencing in Mexico—and around the world—compels us to reexamine the premises on which the Comunalia project has been built, to determine which of them need to be reaffirmed, adjusted, or modified.
We know that key concepts such as citizen collaboration, the Mexican Model of Community Foundations, local development, and strategic social investment are rich in multiple meanings and practical applications. There is still much to analyze and discuss on this topic.
To structure this discussion, I will focus solely on the concept of local development, since it refers to and acknowledges the existence of specific territories in which there are people, groups, institutions, organizations, natural resources, cultural expressions, social needs, histories, established patterns, and potential—all of which are also specific and distinct from those of other places.
The experience we are going through has a lot to teach us—among other things, the need for all of us to come together with a systemic perspective so that we can solve common problems.
The issue of vaccine production and distribution on a global scale serves as an example: vaccinating everyone in one country, regardless of what happens in others, does not eliminate risks for the vaccinated country. We must therefore accept that working in “the community” or at “the local level” involves more than simply interacting with a group of people living within a limited geographical area.
The idea I am proposing is the importance of fostering synergies among various public, private, and social actors so that a joint strategy can more effectively address the problems identified and defined collectively. In other words, actions taken in the name of local development must be comprehensive, simultaneous, multisectoral, and clearly defined in terms of territory.
