Serving the Americas Foundation
Globalizing solidarity
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
The Americas are the most unequal region in the world. At a regional level, approximately one-quarter of children live below the poverty line. In addition to this scarcity of resources at an economic level, in many communities, children also live in multi-dimensional poverty, lacking access to the educational resources and opportunities that would allow them to thrive.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Community and household agricultural plots
The majority of children are severely malnourished in the small rural Guatemalan communities of Canaque and Calanté. Without adequate nutrition in their first few years of life, they will never reach their full physical or cognitive potential. In 2016, America Solidaria measured severe chronic malnutrition rates at 68% of children between the ages of 3 and 6 in Canaque. Communities in rural Guatemala have practiced monocropping of staple crops for years, depleting the soil and leading to an acute lack of nutritional diversity in children's diets. Most community members lack even basic nutritional literacy and the women who typically manage their households are particularly disempowered as a marginalized group that has been excluded from educational and employment opportunities. These conditions amount to a nutritional crisis.
América Solidaria has implemented a multi-year development project in the villages of Canaque and Calanté, which seeks to address the critical issue of malnutrition affecting their communities and empower the communities’ women both socially and economically. Specifically, América Solidaria works synergistically with local community organizations to pursue three primary programmatic objectives: First, América Solidaria professional volunteers help community members build subsistence agricultural plots for each household, which yield the fruits and vegetables necessary to provide nutritionally diverse diets. Second, América Solidaria volunteers train community members, primarily women, to serve as "nutrition ambassadors." These workshops provide women with hands-on training in crop cultivation, nutritional theory and healthy recipes, and commercialization of their plots’ surplus produce, thereby empowering women to drive the systemic changes that our program facilitates. Third, our project seeks to encourage cooperation among men and women within the traditionally segregated communities by installing public agricultural plots as sites of communal maintenance and benefit.
In Canaque and Calanté, América Solidaria is applying a community-based approach that we successfully piloted in similar communities in Honduras and Guatemala. These projects reduced the rate of childhood malnutrition in the target communities by 18%, and improved the social and economic security of the communities’ women by establishing them as critical stakeholders in the project effort. They also had an important contagion effect as neighboring communities sought the expertise of the nutrition ambassadors trained by America Solidaria's volunteers. In the current project, América Solidaria seeks to replicate the success of this pilot program and expand its impact to the communities of Canaque and Calanté. In order to measure the success of the program in its current iteration, América Solidaria will be taking initial and final measurements of a variety of nutritional indicators, as determined by the professional agronomists and medical professionals on the team. In addition, we will be measuring multiple indicators of the economic impact of our projects on familial income. By changing the societal attitudes and habits that contribute to inequality through the structure of our project, América Solidaria hopes to create sustainable change in Canaque and Calanté. As the physical presence of América Solidaria professional volunteers is not permanent, our project will focus on the community training and skill-building that continue to pay dividends long after the project cycle has ended. In addition, by creating opportunities for community members to serve as ambassadors of information and training for their own families and friends, we ensure that our target communities will continue to develop in our absence.
Rebuilding school community in Huaycán, Peru
This project is dedicated to rebuilding positive school community in Fe y Alegria School #53 in Huaycán in the district of Ate Vitarte, Lima. It involves teachers, parents, the management team and the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. In a context where the school has spaces for promotion and strengthening for school coexistence, but its impact is limited by the lack of tools that allow the resolution of conflicts in a non-violent manner from a systemic and rights approach, which strengthen the healthy coexistence, where children are guaranteed participation as subjects and given an integral development.
With the aim of strengthening the spaces for action for the improvement of coexistence, through a perspective of a culture of peace and a systemic approach that empowers personal tools in the members of the school community, promoting life, encouraging hope and building the values of the educational institution that contributes to the integral development of the students and involves the participation of teachers, students and parents in their educational commitment.
Outcomes: We anticipate that at the closure of the project:
* That more than 80% of students strengthen life skills for a culture of peace, focused on empathy and conflict resolution in a non-violent way.
* That more than 80% of the students of the school municipality lead mediation processes, strengthening skills for classroom work for a culture of peace.
* That more than 70% of fathers and mothers of family, strengthen and incorporate protective factors such as limits-norms and / or communication-affection for the positive upbringing of the students.
* That 90% of tutors be trained in topics for a healthy coexistence and integral development, strengthening skills for the accompaniment of students in their integral development processes.
* Have an approved institutional school mediation program, establishing partnerships with 10 educational institutions and / or social intervention to generate a network of cooperation in the locality in order to target the promotion of childhood.
Where we work
External reviews
Videos
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
We mobilize a network of volunteers working with communities to overcome poverty for all children in the Americas. We work to ensure that all children have the access to opportunities such as education, healthcare, an safe living environments.
Our goals are to fight against hunger; malnutrition and lack of access to potable water; prevent household income precariousness; mitigate violence within families, schools and society; promote literacy, lessen the rates of school expulsion and precarious education; and ensure access to health and basic sanitary conditions.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
America Solidaria has been working for 15 years to foster a culture of solidarity through volunteering opportunities for high schoolers, young professionals, and corporate volunteers. We provide formative experiences in development in solidarity to transform people's perspectives, make them aware of their own privileges and the barriers that other people are facing. We link people who have skills and professional experience to grassroots organizations and initiative that could use those skills to get their programs to the next level. We train our volunteers in our approach to capacity building and help them lead these long-term projects in skills transfer.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
We have a sixteen-year history of experience in designing capacity building projects. We've recruited, trained, and supervised almost 900 year-long development volunteers as well as over 2,000 high school volunteer leaders and thousands of short-term corporate volunteers. We have a strong network of grassroots and community-based organizations that we work with and an established reputation for carrying out sustainable interventions with them.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
We have carried out 234 projects and have some remarkable results to share: In Colombia, participation rates in employment skills workshops rose from 60% to 90% through our intervention. In Haiti, we've reduced the rate of infectious disease transmission within our communities of work by 33.5% from an original 65%. In Guatemala, we've lowered the rate of malnutrition for children in the youngest age group by 18%. In Colombia, we've increased parental involvement from 0% to 70% in educational spaces (meetings, events, and workshops). We also collect qualitative testimonials from our program participants. For example, one high school participant said, "In our team, it expanded our ideas, giving us an international mentality, making us more balanced, reflective, and thoughtful, and better communicators, in solidarity and integrity. It strengthened our project and consolidated the ideas we already had to put them into practice effectively."
Financials
Unlock nonprofit financial insights that will help you make more informed decisions. Try our monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights?
Learn more
about GuideStar Pro.
Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Serving the Americas Foundation
Board of directorsas of 01/16/2019
Kellie Meiman Hock
McLarty Associates
Term: 2015 - 2018
Adriana Machado
GE
Meg Poole
Meridian International Center
Adrean Scheid
UnitedHealth Group
Kristen Henry
APIC Consulting Services
Roberto Matus
Chilean-American Chamber of Commerce
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
-
Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? No -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes