Today the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases is participating in a seminar at World Water Week. We will be joined by the FEMSA Foundation to discuss the current state of water and NTD programs within the Latin America and Caribbean region along with covering past successes and future next steps. In the blog post below, Vidal Garza Cantú, Director of the FEMSA Foundation, gives an overview of FEMSA’s work and provides further details on today’s LAC-focused seminar at the 2011 World Water Week.
By: Vidal Garza Cantú, Director of the FEMSA Foundation
FEMSA Foundation is a corporate social investment instrument. What this means is that, with support from FEMSA, the Foundation invests resources to further projects that will improve the overall outlook of communities. Upon starting our activities, we found through research that one of the best ways to really have an impact on people’s opportunities for a better life was to invest in water-related interventions. Today 80% of our projects belong to our Sustainable of Water Resources strategic area. The other 20% belongs to our Quality of Life strategic area, which focuses on the improvement of nutrition, on health, and on biotechnology.
We knew the incredible power water had over people’s lives and we wanted to look for ways for our two strategic areas to converge and increase the impact we had on communities. Water and health seemed to be the perfect match. One of the results we already expected to achieve through our access to safe water interventions was the decrease of disease in the benefited population. In Latin America, as in the rest of the world, rural communities are often burdened by life-threatening diseases due to contaminated water sources. Children, our future, are among the most afflicted demographics. We wanted to put together our experience on water-related intervention with our capabilities on the health front and join our two strategic areas to increase the true impact for people. But we knew that we could never do it alone.
When we heard about what the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases was doing in Chiapas, Mexico we saw a great opportunity. Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are one of the main challenges in the Latin American and Caribbean region. In Mexico, Chiapas is the only state still suffering from trachoma, a NTD and the leading cause of infectious blindness in the world. By partnering with the Global Network, Sabin Vaccine Institute, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Pan-American Health Organization, and the State Government of Chiapas, FEMSA Foundation was able to bring together its already ongoing access to safe water project in Chiapas with an initiative that promised to eradicate trachoma from Mexico once and for all. An initiative that would also promote better education outcomes, increase business productivity, and improve opportunities for long-term economic growth in the communities.
We believe that by creating synergies among diverse actors, thinking creatively, and carrying out concrete solution-oriented actions, we can help offer the people in our region the solutions they so urgently need. This project is a clear example of leadership, technical capacity, public-private partnerships, integration, and political will. We consider that through strategic alliances, and knowledge-based collaboration and dissemination, we can provide long-term solutions that can be replicated worldwide.
As we understand it, only by working together, we can face this and many other challenges. We would like to invite you to join the discussion and participate in our Latin American and Caribbean Focus Water & Health Side Event: “Fighting Poverty in Latin America: Integrating Water and Health Initiatives” during World Water Week in Stockholm as a first step to begin a dialogue that can lead to a commitment towards making a better future for all.
Vidal Garza Cantú is Director of FEMSA Foundation since 2008, and public policy and economics professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey since 1999. He was Associate Dean and Founder of the Public Administration and Public Policy Graduate School (EGAP) at Tecnológico de Monterrey from 2003 to 2006. He earned his Master’s Degree in Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and his Ph.D. in Public Policy at the University of Texas at Austin.