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We are honored to work along the leaders of New Mexico’s child-centered movement — groups that tirelessly work for:
Their work inspires our vision of an educational system that affirms the identity of every child. We support educational sovereignty, quality early childhood education and strong K-12 schools.
Most important, our child-centered investments include the development and scaling of culturally and linguistically responsive education. Learning that’s reflective of children’s unique identity, heritage and diversity is crucial to the academic success of New Mexico’s children.
New Mexico’s resilient families and communities are overcoming incredible challenges to change lives and lead the nation in early childhood education.
Providing energy with an Indigenous lens: Q&A with Navajo Power co-founder Brett Isaac.
We recognize and honor Native people and their unwavering commitment to ensuring that all people thrive. Since time immemorial, Native people have upheld their traditions and cultures while making innovative contributions for a sustainable future. We commit to a future grounded in respect for the sovereign rights of Indigenous peoples.
We partner with organizations that honor Tribal Sovereignty. This means Indigenous communities are leading the decisions and charting their own culturally appropriate methods toward healthy early development outcomes for Indigenous children.
Our investments help support:
We focus our investments in four counties — Bernalillo, Doña Ana, McKinley and San Juan — and partner with the 23 Sovereign Pueblos, tribes and nations statewide. Our focus is on child-centered and community-led strategies that strengthen leaders, systems, policies and practices. Our aspiration for all children to grow, learn and thrive is being realized through innovative models that yield sustainable positive outcomes, including:
Welcome to New Mexico – a tapestry made up of the rich stories of people, cultures, languages, land, history and community pride. In New Mexico, we cherish all the mosaic cultures of our children and honor all of their identities. The threads of traditional knowledge and continuous innovation flow through the generations giving today’s New Mexicans a deeply rooted base of knowledge about what fosters children’s spirit and well-being. With these woven threads, champions and advocates for children envision a child-centered future and embody a movement of collective action and innovation.
Community grantees and partners of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation are central to this child-centered movement. Their decades-long commitments have led to historic transformations in systems and policies that advance the well-being of underserved communities and their youngest members.
At the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, our strategies cut across the political aisle, philanthropic siloes, diverse sectors and issue areas. And in partnership with the 23 Sovereign Pueblos, Tribes and Nations, we commit to a future grounded in respect for the sovereign rights of Indigenous peoples.
All in the service of children – so every child knows without a doubt they and their future are cherished.
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Preschools impacted by Socio-emotional Learning Program “AtentaMente”
450
Primary schools benefiting from Socio-emotional Learning Program “AtentaMente”
Learn more about AtentaMente’s SEL program
Access to water is a fundamental need, which our community partners have established as a priority. We support local leadership, innovation and expansion in work toward sustainable water management strategies. The scope of grantee initiatives has broadened from families to groups, to neighborhoods and even communities, significantly increasing water access.
Universities in Mexico collaborate with local communities in Yucután to create an economy of solidarity.
We help build and strengthen culturally relevant local and regional institutions to expand economic opportunities for families, entrepreneurs, cooperatives, social enterprises and other groups.
These institutions include:
These institutions expand economic opportunities by providing new incentives, risk-sharing initiatives and financial products.
Our primary focus for economic security is on supporting agriculture, especially coffee, honey, the traditional milpa system of farming, backyard vegetable gardens and animal husbandry. We also help strengthen related value chains, from production to marketing, with a recognition of the central importance of territory and land to Indigenous communities of the Chiapas Highlands and inner Yucatán Peninsula.
We also support community ecotourism, as well as cooperatives and other organizations in the artisanal sector to increase income through market access and value chain strengthening.
In Mexico, we support culturally and linguistically relevant (CLR) education because it is essential for children’s growth and success. We do this by investing in teacher training, recruitment of community educators, scalable CLR educational models and CLR educational materials.
Indigenous language rights, preservation and revitalization promote the well-being of children, families and communities well beyond the classroom walls. Our broader language preservation efforts are fueled by an understanding of its importance in all aspects of life and by our dedication to racial equity.
Rising Voices, an initiative of Stitching Global Voices, provides training, mentoring, funding and network-building tools to help people from underrepresented communities tell their stories digitally. In southern Mexico, WKKF supports the organization’s work in leadership development, network expansion and generative exchanges for young digital activists working to revitalize local Indigenous languages.
The Agroecology Fund of the Yucatán Peninsula is a locally managed fund supporting community-led, inclusive and participatory initiatives promoting sustainable agriculture and climate resiliency.
Learn more about the Agroecology Fund of the Yucatán Peninsula.
We are supporting communities to secure access to seed, land and water to advance food sovereignty and enhance adaptation, as well as helping get healthy, locally produced food into schools and local and regional markets.
We are committed to supporting agroecology as a movement that recognizes Indigenous knowledge and connection to all aspects of the environment.
We see declining maternal mortality in the Chiapas Highlands as a positive sign of the impact of our grantees’ work and our focused investments in:
We plan to continue to support the work of our grantees in this area as they expand their reach.
The Movimiento de Parteras de Chiapas Nich Ixim or The Midwives Movement of Chiapas Nich Ixim (Nich Ixim), a network of several hundred Indigenous midwife members, advocates for the rights of birth workers, mothers and children, while helping them improve their skills and working to strengthen communication with officials and medical system workers. The movement holds workshops to bring together midwives and medical workers so they can learn from one another and collaborate for optimal health outcomes, and educates policymakers on key issues, such as the need for official recognition of the work of midwives.
In April 2024, Nich Ixim held a retreat in New York City for midwives from Mexico and several other countries across the Americas. During their time together, they developed a list of demands and presented them to the 23rd annual United National Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Welcome to our micro-regions of Southern Mexico – Dynamic Indigenous communities from the lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula to the misty highlands of Chiapas.
From tropical to cloud forests, cenotes to rivers, plains to mountains, diversified systems like milpa and backyard vegetable gardens to apiaries and coffee plantations, from Yucatec Maya to Tsotsil and Tseltal people, The Inner Yucatan Peninsula and Chiapas Highlands represent great cultural and biological diversity but also share important traits.
Communities are reclaiming history long held by colonists, telling their own stories, and writing their own futures, planting the seeds of progress in their ancestors’ earth, growing strong organizations, leadership and partnerships and beginning to reap the rewards: thriving food systems, health systems, education models and income generation opportunities.
Nurtured more every day, the children are rising to lead and harvest a brighter future.
Today, our grantee partners build alliances to advance health equity, family economic security and early childhood education. Together, we are:
At the national level, our grantees are also improving systems to serve children and families. This includes building stronger partnerships between government and non-governmental organizations and increasing racial equity by raising awareness of the long-standing historical and structural barriers faced by Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities and supporting the construction of an anti-racist agenda in multiple sectors.
St. Boniface Hospital (run by Health Equity International) and the University Hospital of Mirebalais (run by Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante) are health care beacons, drawing patients from across their respective regions to receive quality care. They also work to strengthen care beyond the hospital walls through primary care strategies such as community mobile clinics, referral facilitation and local workforce development, including community health workers, midwives and nurses.
J9 is a health initiative led by Partners in Health – or Zanmi Lasante, as it is known in Haiti – to give women and their newborns constant holistic care and support throughout pregnancy and the first nine months of a baby’s life. This includes a peer-support network, psychological services, nutrition education, home visits, regular health checkups and more. Since 2018, the integrated model has supported more than 2,000 women. Since 2019, nearly every woman in the program has had a facility-based delivery.
Kolektif Arcadins, formerly the Sustainable Village and Learning Community, is an integrated community development initiative designed to promote systemic change in Arcahaie and the Arcadins Coast of Haiti.
Kolektif was born through a participatory community visioning process, with local residents and stakeholders sharing their views of local education, health, economic and environmental challenges, priorities and opportunities. With input from 600 local stakeholders, the Bridgespan Group worked with the 12 founding organizations to develop strategic and business plans, prioritizing economic and agricultural development, entrepreneurship (in collaboration with the Haiti Food System Alliance), community health care, education and civic engagement.
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Grantees, funding partners, and other stakeholders
ECEFES/EEHE
3 programmatic framework areas
MSN, HFSA,Kolektif DesArcadins
4 Systems Change Initiatives
10
Years
Convening & Network-Building
A master plan for 40 acres Kolektif acquired in Arcahaie calls for a three-phase process of development, capital construction and program implementation by 2029.
The first anchor program for Kolektif focuses on agricultural and economic development in collaboration with the Haiti Food System Alliance. Leveraging national HFSA networks, will create viable livelihood and entrepreneurial opportunities in agriculture and fishing for local residents, including men, women and youth.
Learn more about Kolektif Arcadins
The 15 partner organizations (including the Model School Network, members of Kolektif Arcadins, Health Equity International and Zanmi Lasante) in the Haiti Food Systems Alliance operate across Haiti in three areas:
Learn more about the Haiti Food Systems Alliance
The Model School Network (MSN) is building a powerful change movement for students in Haiti. Launched in 2016, the network enables sustained, cross-sector collaboration, drawing together a range of Haitian and international partners with a shared vision of change and complementary expertise and resources.
The MSN creates model approaches for quality teaching, learning and governance that can be replicated anywhere in Haiti and scales evidence-based solutions through mutual learning, technical assistance and focused advocacy. The result: program sustainability and a culture of shared responsibility for student success and well-being.
3
SchoolNetworks
200
Schools
50K
Students
360
CommittedPartners
Learn more about the Model School Network.
Leadership development and community engagement are embedded in all that we do. Listening to communities and working with local leaders – including youth leadership – are essential in our generational commitment to Haiti.
The Haitian Education and Leadership Program (HELP), based in Port-au-Prince, supports Haitian students, selected for need and merit, as they pursue college degrees and participate in professional development, foreign language classes, leadership training and skill development to make a difference in their communities and country.