Grupo Vidanta Announces Winners for Philanthropic Initiatives to Combat Poverty and Inequality in Latin America

Vidanta Foundation Award 2013 Awarded to Top Organizations throughout Latin America

Three prizes were awarded out of hundreds of entries along with one lifetime achievement award

The ceremony for the Vidanta Foundation Awards 2013 was held this past December 4th at the Santiago National Museum of Fine Arts. On this occasion there were two award categories: “Lifetime Achievement Award” and “Contributions to reduction of poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean Award”.

The Award was created in 2009, following an initiative of cooperation between the Organization of American States (OAS), the Iberoamerican Secretary General (SEGIB) and the Vidanta Foundation, with an annual total contribution of USD $225,000, which is donated by the Foundation in its entirety. The award has the ultimate goal of recognizing and supporting outstanding work carried forward in Latin American and The Caribbean to reduce poverty, inequality and fight discrimination. Furthermore, it seeks to promote humanitarian and solidarity values amongst the general population and to encourage philanthropy and corporate social responsibility.

The jury of the Vidanta Foundation Award 2013 consisted of Carmelo Angulo (Spain), Rebeca Grynspan (Costa Rica), Nora Lustig (Mexico), Jose Luis Machinea (Argentina), Luis Maira (Chile), Billie Miller (Barbados) and Julio Maria Sanguinetti (Uruguay).

According to the jury’s decision, “there were 75 organizations competing for this award. This is a very relevant testimony to the principles of social solidarity that inspire people in Latin American societies, projected specifically in benefit of millions of people in need. Within this group, several of those projects were able to show substantial and comparable values for this award. After careful consideration, the Jury opted to award the Charity Organization “Hogar de Cristo” from Chile. To achieve this result, the Jury considered the long history of the organization, the generalized support of the Chilean people, and their effective and proven commitment to overcome poverty, from the front of direct solidary action and also from the front of an universal definition of poverty, which has even been worthy of recognition from the Chilean State”.

lIFETIME ACHEIVEMENT AWARD:

Hogar de Cristo

The Charity “Hogar de Cristo” was originated in Chile in 1944 as an initiative of San Alberto Hurtado, a Jesuit priest whom had great influence in the social thinking of the country. The Charity’s main purpose is to reduce exclusion of the more vulnerable and poorer sectors and bring society together in the fight for their social integration. It has had a great development and has established itself as the leading Chilean institution working with poor people. It has tended to the needs of the most excluded groups in their society, acting quickly upon emergencies (Santiago’s flood in 1994 and the earthquake on Feb 27, 2010), adapting their methodologies and lines of action to the changes produced in society, collaborating and affecting the different sectors. In recent years, they have developed campaigns and proposed models of intervention to influence public policy directed to eradicate poverty and inequality.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO REDUCTION OF POVERTY AND INEQUALITY IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

FIRST PRIZE:

Asociación Colectivo Mujeres al derecho, Colombia (USD $75,000)

This organization executes activities in the Colombian Caribbean region since 2005. Through their program “Multicultural Space for Women” they support over 2,000 indigenous and African-Colombian displaced women to promote and encourage the integral human development and sustainability in their communities, through participation in different decision making spaces at local, provincial and national levels.

SECOND PRIZE:

IXIM, A.C., Mexico (USD $50,000)

IXIM A.C. works with and supports highly marginalized tzeltales communities in the municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas, with the goal of transitioning them from merely receiving help to actually increasing their sustainable production of food. The model “Camino IXIM” combines impactful actions at different time terms: at the immediate term, mitigating hunger in between harvests through the provision of corn, at the medium term through sustainable maize fields, orchards, water tanks and poultry to increase the production and food quality, and at the long term with agro-ecological sowing, benefiting the recovery of the soil’s fertility.

THIRD PRIZE:

Proyecto Transgénero, Ecuador (USD $25,000)

The Project was born in 2002 with the purpose to work with communities of transgender sex workers, official institutions workers, national police and the general transgender population in the city of Quito. The project created the Legal Patrol- an innovative approach based on the “alternative use of the law”- which consists in the intervention of different teams of “itinerant legal counseling” roaming the streets offering legal counseling to the transgender sex workers.