Donations to the third sector are currently scarce in Mexico, as a result, levels of overall investment in the projects supported by civil society are rather low.
At the same time, although organizations are accountable and report to various authorities, society at large does not know about such information, or simply do not have easy access to it.
Fondos a la Vista has developed a platform to facilitate information about civil society organizations committed to social development and their donors.
The project has as its main objective to promote transparency and accountability in the sector and to promote trust in private donations and organizations.
It also aims to the recognition of the work and commitment of CSOs that already are have good transparency practices in place.
Facebook: Fondos a la Vista • Twitter: @FondosalaVista
Alcalde, cómo vamos? is a platform of more than 40 social, academic and business organizations that agree to work for the civic and democratic maturity of the Nuevo León State in Mexico.
They have proposed 10 concrete actions to all candidates for Mayor in the 9 neighboring municipalities of Monterrey during the 2012 electoral process.Elected mayors of Monterrey, Guadalupe, Apodaca, San Nicolas de los Garza, San Pedro Garza Garcia, Santa Catarina, Escobedo, and Juárez García signed a commitment to perform these actions between 2012 and 2015.
During these three years, the platform is measuring, comparing and communicating the level of compliance of each action in each municipality.
Alcalde, cómo vamos? it is an unprecedented instrument for accountability that can contribute to changing the relationship between citizens and local authorities.
México Infórmate works to promote access to public information in Mexico. At the same time, it seeks to generate a national dialogue involving civil society organizations, governmental organizations and academic institutions on the importance of the right to know.
Its main objectives are:
- To involve citizens in public affairs and get them to participate, in an informed manner, of decision-making processes and government oversight.
- To inspire journalists to use the laws of access to information as a critical tool for investigative work.
- To establish dialogue channels among media, public bodies and the general public, to discuss the importance of the right to know.
- To promote the role of the culture of transparency in the consolidation of participatory democracy in Mexico.
- To contribute to the dissemination of the culture of transparency in Mexico and promote the practical use of the laws of access to information as a tool to improve the quality of life for people.
México Infórmate has been involved in the drafting of a citizens’ legal initiative on transparency (unfortunately, legislators are seeking to negatively modify it, even when they themselves invited civil society to participate).
The organization also trains journalists on right to information and transparency issues and periodically publishes its own blog in El Universal, one of the major national newspapers.
So far, México Infórmate has published three studies on the Mexican Congress, the Administration of Justice System. More recently, it carried out a study on local Institutes of Transparency, which can be consulted here.
Facebook: México Infórmate •Twitter:@MxInformate
Fundación Ciudadana Civio (Civio) is a Spanish non-profit organization established in February of 2012.
Its strategy is to increase transparency and accountability through the use of information technologies and data journalism.
Their commitment is to promote transparency and the recognition and democratization of the right to access to information.
Civio’s ultimate goal is to increase citizens’ participation and awareness and to achieve significant cultural and legislative changes fostering a stronger democracy.
Civio’s combine web applications and data journalism to develop innovative digital tools that facilitate access and interpretation of public information.
Through the use of data mining, scraping, analysis and visualization, as well as the generation of quality content, Civio addresses fields such as public budgets, governmental pardons, access to information and conflicts of interest.
Facebook: Fundación Ciudadana Civio • Twitter: @Civio
Founded in 2012, Borde Político is a NGO created with the purpose of developing digital tools for monitoring the performance of the Mexican Congress.
Through this platform, citizens can better know the work of their representatives and find interactive tools designed to function as simple mechanisms for consulting, displaying or disseminate relevant information related to both Chamber of the Mexican Congress.
Since 2013, through a specialized project named Borde Jurídico, the transparency effort extended to observe the work of the Judiciary Branch.
Its team consists of 13 people, which includes political scientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers and programmers is dedicated to digitize, illustrate and make available, in real time, information generated in the Congress and the Supreme Court. The digital platforms developed by Borde Político aim to encourage citizen contributions and debate to political processes and legislation.
In addition, Borde Político is part of the Opening Parliament Alliance (Mexico) and has established important partnerships to work on matters of open budget and legislative budgets with renowned civil society organizations in Mexico such as Fundar and Métrica Pública.
Twitter: @bordepolitico /@bordejuridico • Facebook: Borde Político, Borde Jurídico • Youtube: Borde Político, Borde Jurídico
