ACEVEDO ORTIZ, MARCO AURELIO

Through my life I always worked with rural communities, all of them linked with migration, poverty and non-economic options for their development, as a result I’ve been trying to focus my career on helping those communities, particularly the ones in the Oaxaca state, as I was born in one of the mixteca’s communities and options where basically non-existant.

When I finished my career as an administrator I tried to be in contact with different options to learn how I could improve the condition on my own community, so I joined a civil association who was evaluating in 2004 the pioneer program “iniciativa ciudadana 3x1”, in three different states.

That experience showed me all the successful stories of people that with a little initiative, faith and some support from their paisanos, tried so hard to accomplish what the government could not, and that was create real alternatives for their families in their own communities, as the paisanos were really struggling to send some cash to their families, and life wasn’t that easy.

From there I worked in different international organizations trying to learn how to coordinate, manage and support those communities, not only with good intentions but with knowledge and the right tools to ensure that projects were a long term alternative, and not just supporting “magical recipes” without consulting the people or even asking them if that was what they wanted.

We all tend to believe that we know the answers for the poverty and development, however from my learning and experience it’s the community that has the answer, and only requires a little guidance, faith, expertise and support to have a better quality of life and an alternative for their families.