Tag Archives: FEMSA Foundation

More from World Water Week 2011

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World Water Week 2011 took place this past summer August 21 – 26 2011 in Stockholm, Sweden. The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases along with our Latin America and Caribbean water initiative partners — the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and FEMSA Foundation — had our very own session during the conference entitled “Focus Latin America and the Caribbean: Fighting Poverty in Latin America: Integrating Water and Health Initiatives.” Panelists convened to take in-depth look at NTDs in Latin America and the Caribbean, and  to discuss promising strategies to sustainably reduce the burden of NTDs within the region. Below are photos from the session:

Our booth during the event.

Panelists (from left to right): Ann Kelly, Partner, Global Philanthropy Group and The Global Water Initiative of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, Vidal Garza Cantú, Director, FEMSA Foundation, Neeraj Mistry, Managing Director, Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, Carlos de Paco, Operations Lead Specialist, Inter-American Development Bank, and Moderator Gian-Carlo Ochoa, Board Member, Charity Water.

Group photo with Global Network Managing Director Dr. Neeraj Mistry and event participants.

FEMSA Foundation Fights Poverty in Latin America using Water and NTD Initiatives

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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.

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