Using Causes to Create Change in Mexico

Just a few weeks ago on January 19th, Juan Jiménez and Raymundo Gutierrez set up the cause Desviar recursos de visita Papal a Mexico para combatir hambruna en grupos indigenous to encourage the Mexican government to divert resources from the Pope’s visit to México to instead aid struggling indigenous people. After seeing their rapid growth on Causes, I reached out to learn more about their cause. Here is their story.

The Pope’s upcoming visit is estimated to cost México more than 50 million pesos ($3.9 million). At the same time, indigenous groups are struggling with one of the worse dry spells of the last decade, affecting their crops, income and causing many to starve to death. Part of the outrage over this visit comes from the fact this is a Presidential election year here in México and that many consider this visit as a political maneuver in favor of the party (Partido Acción National) currently in power. More importantly, the visit will be payed by the tax payers and as a secular nation, this doesn’t send a good message to all religious (or anti-religious) groups in Mexico.

Our goal for creating the cause was to create enough socio-political pressure to encourage federal leaders to use these funds to alleviate some of Mexico’s challenges, such as the starving indigenous groups. We want to create as much awareness as possible and raise funds among the members to alleviate the current food crisis.

I’ve thought about why this cause is growing so quickly and I think its rapid growth is attributed to the fact that 99% of Mexicans can relate to the cause, as can most people anywhere else in the world. We are taking full advantage of the tools provided by Causes (Updates, Widgets, Pledges, etc.), as well as the using other social media to spread the word about the cause (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). We recently launched a membership drive on Causes using the new Recruit Members action and recruited more than 2,400 people to the cause in 5 days.

Using Causes, we thank top recruiters, monitor the message board constantly and address questions as they appear, we have been very transparent on our cause and put forth our best effort to make it go viral. Thank you, Causes.

- Juan and Raymundo
Cause – Desviar recursos de visita Papal a Mexico para combatir hambruna en grupos indigenous

Thank you, Juan and Raymundo! Check out the cause to show your support for the 99% in México.