Mexican Solidarity

This comprehensive volume presents research on Mexican practices of solidarity where citizens were engaged in working towards helping others voluntarily. It set out to investigate the nature and quality of the work and time that volunteers give towards obtaining the common good, in a country where the awareness of the importance of social capital needs to be reinforced for the development of democracy.

The purpose of this research was not only to present numbers, facts, and data on a national scale but also to explore the depths of citizen participation in the everyday lives and activities of the Mexican population. Mexico's Solidarity provides a strong contribution by finding ways to promote and maintain social cohesion through the best volunteer practices. The techniques and findings of this case study on Mexico provide a valuable contribution to the Nonprofit and Third Sector research internationally.

"This book offers its readers a valuable insight into solidarity in Mexico....It could turn out to be the greatest challenge for a society such as ours: to learn how to get organized in order to make citizen participation and volunteer work the best way to achieve the common good."

Margarita Zavala, First Lady of Mexico, President of the Consulting Citizens Council of the National DIF System

"This study combines quantitative and qualitative analyses to provide an unprecedented window on the ways in which Mexican citizens engage in voluntary action."

L. David Brown, Senior Research Fellow for International Programs at The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University

"Scholars of volunteering have much to learn from the way Butcher and her colleagues conducted their study, and from the original qualitative analyses they applied."

Hagai Katz, Lecturer, Program for Nonprofit Management, Gilford Glazer School of Business and Management

Chief Research Officer, Israeli Center for Third-Sector Research (ICTR), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel

"This book is the first to offer a reliable panorama of what Mexican solidarity looks like with firm and trustworthy outlines. Rather than drawing conclusions, it encourages and opens opportunities for more research. It is a book well worth reading and studying."

Jorge Alonso, Professor/ Researcher and Editor of the Desacatos Journal of the Research Center and Superior Studies in Social Anthropology, CIESAS-Occidente, Mexico

"This pioneering study is an important contribution that leads to a greater understanding of the value of voluntary action and citizen participation as building blocks for a stronger and more dynamic organized civil society."

Manuel Arango, Founder of the Mexican Center for Philanthropy

Auteur

Jacqueline Butcher García-Colín is President of the Board of Directors of the Mexican Center for Philanthropy (Centro Mexicano para la Filantropía, or CEMEFI) from 2006 to 2010, and President of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) from 2007 to 2008. Ms. Butcher has a B.Sc. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and also Master's and Doctoral degrees in Human Development from the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City). Her research is concerned with volunteering and citizen participation, and she has been widely published. She belongs to the Editorial Board of Prometeo and Voluntas and is a member of the Technical Expert Group for the Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work assembled by ILO and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society Studies. In Mexico, is currently on the Board of the National Health Foundation (FUNSALUD) and is Member of the Citizens' Advisory Council of the National System for Integral Family Development (Sistema Nacional para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, or SNDIF)

Résumé
During the nearly 20 years of its existence, the Centro Mexicano para la Filantropía, A.C. (Cemefi, acronym in Spanish for the Mexican Center for Philanthropy) has promoted a varied agenda of research about civil society in Mexico. Cemefi has produced and published information on the characteristics of the social organizations that make up the Mexican nonprofit sector, as well as infor- tion about the type of legal, fiscal, and economic factors that promote or hinder organized citizen participation based on the principles of solidarity, social resp- sibility, and philanthropy. Once again, with the aim of bringing together information regarding the imp- tance of practices of solidarity in the country, Cemefi has decided to contribute to understanding, making known, and ultimately promoting volunteer action and acts of solidarity undertaken by citizens in this country. The end result of this effort is portrayed in this book, Mexican Solidarity: Citizen Participation and Volunteerism, edited and coordinated by Doctor Jacqueline Butcher. It is the product of a joint effort on the part of different people and insti- tions with a common goal: finding out about the characteristics of volunteerism and, in general, citizen participation in acts of solidarity in Mexico.

Contenu
Conceptual Framework for Volunteer Action and Acts of Solidarity.- Graphic Acts of Solidarity in Mexico (Analysis of the National Survey on Solidarity and Volunteer Action).- How to Become a Volunteer?.- The Concept of Giving in Mexico.- Nonprofit Organizations in Mexico: Case Studies.- Findings, Challenges, and Implications.