2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

17th Edition

Phase 6 of 7

Publication Preparation 18/09/2023 - 06/11/2023

Process phases

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Mérida nos une / Mérida unites us

Official proposal

06/06/2023 16:56

In the year 2020, the needs in the municipality of Mérida, Yucatán exceeded the capacity to attend to all the problems and challenges derived from the COVID-19 pandemic and the floods caused by strong tropical storms, which motivated the creation of a strategy that facilitated coordination between various sectors of society that, hand in hand with the City Council, could help the most pressing needs of the population most in need in an articulated and organized manner.

This is how the Mérida Nos Une Platform was born, creating a web page that would promote citizen participation, make it possible to collect requests for help and receive support proposals offered by various actors in society (companies, basic, medium and higher level educational institutions, associations , groups and citizens in particular). Aid translated into channeling donations in kind, voluntary action and non-profit professional health and food services.

Mérida Nos Une, linked various ways of helping through professional help and volunteering such as: emotional and thanatological accompaniment, help with transportation and transfers, collection of health items and food, disinfection services, healing, among others. Similarly, in-kind donations were channeled, among which the following stand out: pantries, health care supplies, face masks, antibacterial gel, sanitizers, disinfection services, sheets for roofing homes affected by the rains, etc.

The Platform grew and gained the spaces it offered after numerous spaces for reflection and analysis, to give way to a Directory of Citizen Aid that would make it possible to more easily link those who needed help with those who could grant it in terms of human development, education, physical and emotional health, nutrition, economic recovery. In the same way, a Directory of Social Impact Projects is created, which today houses more than 24 projects that address various social and environmental causes, being able to connect numerous supports in kind and volunteering towards projects of civil society organizations and social companies. who carry out invaluable work in favor of vulnerable groups; thus strengthening solidarity and co-responsible citizen participation. Whoever joins the current RED MÉRIDA NOS UNE, jointly assumes the commitment to give and receive from those who are part of it, under a logic of selfless, non-profit aid that promotes the reconstruction of the social fabric.

Three years after the creation of this mutual aid network, 296,756 products and services have been channeled, benefiting more than 55,073 people including girls, boys, youth, adults, and the elderly in neighborhoods, shelters, health institutions, among others. . All of this has been possible thanks to the more than 1,500 solidarity initiatives and 973 volunteers who have joined to support, in a disinterested and non-profit way, neighborhoods and police stations in Mérida, as well as civil society organizations that serve populations at risk. : older people, people with disabilities, children, people living on the streets, poverty, etc.

https://merida.gob.mx/meridanosune/