Amigos de San Cristóbal, Mexico
Since its founding in 2005, Amigos de San Cristóbal has been committed to supporting vulnerable populations in San Cristóbal de Las Casas and across the Highlands of Chiapas in the South of Mexico. The organization had initially conceived its role as a bridge, channeling external resources to local civil society organizations. In 2018, with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Amigos de San Cristóbal took the decision to formally reorient its work as a community foundation, and in 2020 it launched a specific community philanthropy programme. The aim of the programme was to involve rural and urban communities from across the region more meaningfully in creating positive social change, emphasizing the role that local resources and social change agents can play in contributing to this.
The starting point for the programme was to interrogate the very idea of who is a philanthropist with the aim of shifting the understanding of “philanthropy” from something only done by wealthy people in faraway places to something much more participatory, local and community-based in nature. Amigos de San Cristóbal embraces a broad understanding of what constitutes philanthropic resources, describing “the four T’s: treasure, time, talent and testimony.” Local Giving Circles are one of the primary tools used by the organization to build local philanthropy in the region and are a vehicle through which communities can pool their “four T” resources. With a 2021 GFCF grant the organization set out to continue strengthening and broadening the impact of this work.
The Giving Circles aim to challenge social, political and economic norms by being based on the premise that everyone has something to contribute, even in the face past injustices or conventional assumptions regarding different community members’ “place” in the community. Amigos de San Cristóbal is committed to diversity and linguistic access and, in that spirit, all communications around the Giving Circles programme were made available in four languages: Tseltal, Tsotsil, Spanish and English. The inclusion of local indigenous languages was especially significant as it encourages participation from individuals and communities who have traditionally been marginalized and excluded. Furthermore, work with indigenous groups was a deliberate strategy aimed at tapping into ancestral practices of giving, solidarity and reciprocity, recognizing that these concepts are deeply woven into the fabric of indigenous communities.
As Amigos de San Cristóbal continues to test different strategies and refine its Giving Circles approach based on lessons learned, it has come to believe that its efforts to shift traditional notions around philanthropy in the Highlands of Chiapas are well worth it. The foundation is confident that it is creating a solid basis from which social change in the region can be more effectively realized. Giving Circles participants are also starting to see themselves as philanthropists and local change-makers, rather than simply passive recipients of charity.
Since 2021, the GFCF has made two grants to Amigos de San Cristóbal , totaling US $46,195.