Activistas MX: empowering local leaders for global democracy

Activistas MX is the first multi-issue campaign platform in Mexico that combines offline organizing and online tactics to facilitate the collective action of citizens with training, crowdsourcing and scalling strategically.

Our multi-issue platform combine offline orgnizing and online tactics in three-phase program:

Training: We train young activists to become community organizers. Through our online tutorials and on-site workshops, participants learn how to identify and diagnose a public problem. Participants use design thinking tools to come up with viable solutions, which they frame into public narratives to engage other citizens into collective action.

Crowdsourcing: Organizers launch civic campaigns targeting decision-makers through our platform to get the support of a broader audience. The platform helps organizers recruit volunteers, mobilize a constituency, pressure authorities, publicize events, and co-organize campaign activities.

Scaling Strategically: The campaigns with the highest levels of engagement receive direct mentorship from our staff on media strategies and mobilization tactics until they achieve their expected public-value goal: policy change, legislation reform, or public service improvements.

In the last decade, satisfaction with democracy in Mexico has declined steadily. Currently, only 16% of Mexicans are satisfied with their democracy, and nine out of ten believe that “Mexico is governed by a few powerful groups in their own benefit”, according to Latinobarómetro 2018. Detachment from democratic institutions creates a vicious cycle. By delegating public decisions entirely to politicians, public institutions become less responsive to the majority’s will, power asymmetries widen, and democracies get easily captured by interest groups and authoritarian populist leaders.

When a citizen feels outraged and moved by a public issue, she can access our platform and launch a campaign to start taking action. As an organizer, she is first directed to our training program (video-tutorials or in-person workshops) that will prepare her to lead a civic campaign. Through our Civic Template, organizers communicate their goal, public narrative, and tactics. This template is inspired by professor Marshall Ganz’ teachings at the Harvard Kennedy School. After completion of the template, the platform launches the campaign online and sends notifications to potential supporters. The platform enables organizers to engage supporters in different ways: they can volunteer, share on social media or call the attention of a public authority. The platform creates value for both users by providing the following tools: 

·) campaign (petition) template;

·) chats groups between organizers and supporters;

·) advertising in social media;

·) advocate by making pressure to officers signing petitions and sending emails and tweets to their direct account;

·) hosting events

In summary, our platform reduces the costs of participation and increase the benefits of participate in the collective action.

We have understanded the needs of mexican citizens by two ways:

1) With data from specialized surveys and reports like Latinobarometro and Informe País of National Electoral Institute of Mexico. 

2) With own experience as activists working in different social movements and grassroots organizations, like Ateneo Nacional de la Juventud, Nosotrxs and ¡Que nos pregunten! where we have perceived that civic engagement defines and gets defined by structural inequalities. While Mexican elites have direct access to and receive priority attention by public officials, street protests are the common pathway for excluded communities to voice their needs. Last year 3,200 demonstrations took place only in Mexico City. The most outraged ones received media attention, but they were limited in creating policy solutions and achieving social change. In the short term, protests may push issues forward in the agenda, but without strategy and organization, they do not lead to sustainable solutions.

Although democracy should be grounded on civic participation, civil society in Mexico is disarticulated. Only 7% of Mexicans belong to a civic group, as 44% consider it costly and difficult to get together with their neighbors for a common cause, according with data from Latinobarómetro. And when participation takes place, it gets easily jeopardized and discouraged by nonstrategic action. Half of Mexicans believe that their civic participation does not attain their expected outcomes. Frustration particularly arises when social movements implement once and again, the same concentration tactics (rallies, sit-ins, demonstrations) without a specific goal or strategy. When social movements get trapped into group thinking or authoritarian top-down leaderships, they fall into the inertia of mobilization for its own sake.

The problem of low and ineffective civic engagement6 in Mexico is ultimately one of collective action: orchestrating effective civic participation requires training, strategy, and technology that neither the government nor the market will provide.

Activistas MX was a concept in 2018 when we identified the inequality in the civic engagement and we analysed the market size and our direct and indirect competitors. 

Our iniative was a prototype in 2019 when we recruited 50 activists from our network of social movements for training and run 8 civic campaigns of which 4 were succesfull and awarded at Harvard University on January 2020

Activistas MX was a pilot when we launched our multi-issue campaigns platform in 2020 summer. We trained new organizer from our partnerhsip Agenda Joven and runned 12 national, regional and local campaigns about COVID-19.

Since 2021 we focused in became ordinary citizens to leaders for the collective action. We have collected +40,000 signatures from 100 petitions.

Now Activistas MX is growth looking expand his services and team in the top most connected Mexican cities: Puebla, Monterrey, Oaxaca and Guadalajara.

Our multi-issue campaigns platform connects organizers with supporters for build the collective action through the next process:

1) Everyone can create a petition about a public problem. The page of the civic campaign contains: a picture, allocation, what happens, why is important, the corresponding decision-maker, comments from the signers and number of signatures.

2) Everyone can sign a petition. The platform collect full name, email, phone number, ZIP code and specifications about the device which they are connected.

3) The organizer can sends emails to the supporters for mobilise them to any offline and online activity: fundraising, recruitment, share information, ask support for another civic campaign, invitation to workshops or meetings.

4) With our mentorship by means video-tutorials or in-person workshops, the organizers may develop their civic campaigns more strategically. For remarkable social movements, our team may analyse the database and strategically helping in trainings, advertising in social media, phonebanks, team building, text banking and door knocks.

We used our network of grassroots movements in Mexico City to recruit and train a first generation of 50 community organizers during 2019 summer. These organizers built 4 succesful local civic campaigns awarded during Mexico Conference 2020 at Harvard University. 

During 2020 summer we will officially launched the platform in Mexico City in partnership with Agenda Joven, an advocacy network that gathers 30 youth organizations and +2,000 social activists in Mexico City. We trained these organizations and built 12 civic campaigns for help the neighborhoods recover from the economic, social, and public-health affectations due to COVID19. Additionally we expanded the brand recognition through targeted social media advertising.

During 2021 we achieved 100 petitions of national, regional and local civic campaigns in our platform. We trained continuosly ordinary citizens for lead these campaigns and they collected + 40,000 e-signatures from supporters. The half of these campaigns achieved their final purpose but all ranked their topics in the public agenda and received attention from the authorities.

In summary, we are serving +40,000 people (own organizers, supporters, members of another organizations )involved in different social movements. Additionally, we plan to serve for 2022 +100,000 people: recruit and train over 1000 organizers, increase our membership (users that signed-up to receive updates) over 10,000 and reach over 100,000 supporters.

Activistas MX has the next three goals for 2022:

1) Expand our services in the top 4 most connected Mexican cities: Monterrey, Guadalajara, Oaxaca and Puebla.

2) Run one School of Citizen Activism in every city for train and recruit +50 young organizers in each one.

3) Reach +500 petitions and collect +100,000 new signatures in our platform with at least 60% succesful civic campaigns.

These goals are interdependent. We will expand our services with a new staff for every new city, then we need recruit and train organizers but this people require offline and online experience, hence they will launch local civic campaigns in which they will transform their communities and collect more data about them for build local teams.

Activistas MX aims to impact two variables: (I) the number of Mexicans engaged in collective actions and (II) the effectiveness of their participation. For the first variable, we will track key performance indicators to show the level of civic engagement crated by our platform. For the second variable, we will look at the proportion of Mexicans who consider public decision-making is inclusive and responsive. This is a Sustainable Development Goal indicator measured every two years by the Mexican government in a national survey. This indicator will give us a baseline reference, yet we will survey a representative sample of our beneficiaries to compare the before and after of our intervention. Ultimately, we want our platform to create public value not only by changing the civic behavior of direct beneficiaries but also by improving the quality of life of their communities. We understand the complexity involved in measuring such impact. Thus, we will forge alliances with consulting firms and academic institutions to be able to quantify the social value generated by our campaigns.

Our main barrier for achieve our goals for 2022 are the funds andlack of staff enough by the next reasons.

First, we need maintain online the platform
for the constant communication between organizers and supporters,
then we can't reduce budget from this core function. 

Second, the recruitment and training of new staff require a lot 
of personalized attention and we can't do it only online. We need
are with them on the field and couching them for empower their communities.

Third, one important process is the spread of the petition to collect data,  analyse it and work with the supporters, one tool is the advertising in social. The most remarkable civic campaigns always receive strategic advertising by us.

Activistas MX is integrated by young people with skills in
public narrative, strategizing, coaching, public policy and mobilising for enable another people.

Although we share the inspiration by professor Marshall Ganz, we have applied these tactics with different communities (LGBTQ+, feminists, commonholds, entrepreneurs, single mothers, unions), which enriches our strategic capacity.

Our stories are similar to those of many people: we have identified the inequality in civic engagement, we have suffered attacks from Mexican government and we have perceived the high costs for got involved in public affairs.

Activistas MX represent everyone who want to take action for resolve a local, regional or national problem. As young citizens, we understand the instituional barriers and disincentives for participate, then as  activists we aspire to facilitate and innovate the process for make public incidence.

Ateneo Nacional de la Juventud: a youth grassroots orgnization with +200 members which create and promote discussion spaces and cultural activities.

Agenda Joven: a network of little youth orgnizations focused in make recommendations about public policy to government.

¡Que nos pregunten!: a social movement that train young people for occupy and democratise the local and national institutional mechanisms of incidence.