Subscribe to learn more from WKKF
Δ
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.
>200
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.
Our goal in this campaign is to broaden support for locally led initiatives effectively working toward a strong and equitable future for Haitian children, families and communities.
Pockets of Hope showcases Haitian organizations carrying out transformative initiatives, while we share effective philanthropic practices and advise on ways to develop partnerships with the leaders and organizations that are doing the work.
Our commitment to central and southwest Haiti began with investing in community visioning processes. We brought together local stakeholders with firsthand knowledge to identify opportunities that would bring change and improve the lives of their children, families and communities.
Our grantees are developing leaders of a new Haiti, building local alliances and working with community members for long-term changes to improve access to:
Together, we are:
Welcome to Haiti, the world’s first independent Black republic and the first country in the Americas to end slavery. A land of relentless upheaval, both natural and manmade, and of grim headlines — and also of perseverance, innovation, and a fierce love of nation.
Haiti is where women travel hours to sell at market every day, in every kind of storm, to put their children through school.
It’s the land of exquisite kanaval – a beautiful, artistic explosion of cultural memory and ingenuity, of protests under the hot sun, with songs and declarations saying, “We deserve better!”
It’s the street bands, with grounding rhythms and soaring spirits.
It’s the land of cooperative labor and communal strength, where educators, health care workers, farmers, merchants, mothers, fathers and children refuse to give up, where the roots are so deep and strong that no matter what, the branches will grow. And with hard work and determination, Haiti will get there.
Our grants and community partners:
In Biloxi Public Schools, for example, we funded second-grade teacher assistants, a school nurse and technology upgrades in the elementary schools with the highest poverty rate and growing English language learners communities. These investments helped close the achievement gap between low and high socioeconomic communities – making the schools among the top-ranked in the state while also reducing discipline infractions and student absenteeism.
Teacher retention, a national education issue and statewide investment, is trending higher thanks to investments in a teacher residency program that includes learning supports and mentorship.
We support vocational training in new and green-sector careers, like technology, artificial intelligence (AI), the environment, advanced manufacturing and health care – high-paying industries with increasing demand for highly skilled workers. We also support career pathways that are essential to our community’s infrastructure and the health and well-being of our children and families. This includes water technicians, wastewater operators and environmental compliance specialist jobs.
Lack of dependable transportation and quality child care can present barriers to employment for many working families. So our partners provide wraparound services that go beyond just creating jobs, but also build families’ financial literacy, with an eye toward wealth creation.
We are working with our partners to prioritize equity in early childhood education by:
Because of the advocacy work of our partners, pre-K funding over the past decade increased from $3M to $44M, and now about 58% of the state’s 4-year-olds are in publicly funded pre-K programs.
$3M
$44M
Pre-K Funding
Public Pre-K Enrollment
Our investments also help child care and Head Start programs receive professional support and create quality environments that promote learning and developmental growth. This includes social and emotional programming that promotes a child’s holistic development, helps them build positive relationships and enhances their academic success.
Mississippi’s business community is uniquely invested in early learning, recognizing the impact quality child care has on their current and future workforce. Partners in government, communities, schools and providers complete the collaborative ecosystem for realizing this goal.
The health of babies starts with the health of mothers, which is why we also support families’ access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Mississippi’s agricultural history, marred by labor practices like slavery and sharecropping, still keeps people of color from buying and cultivating land. Yet farmers of color are working cooperatively to provide Mississippi-grown fruits and vegetables to families through farmers’ markets, grocery stores, hospitals and schools.
We support communities of farmers working together to share food-growing knowledge while pooling their resources. Their work ensures consumers can access the food they need to lead healthy lives.