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Our first chapter in Mexico, ACORN Tijuana, was organized at the behest of Mexican ACORN members in San Diego. With their help and encouragement, we launched ACORN Tijuana in 2005, and immediately began working on issues that affected BOTH Mexico and the United States. One of our first campaigns focused on the industrial waste created by Maquiladora factories near the US/Mexico border, which was dumped very close to where our members were housed. Through a collective effort, we secured guarantees from the Maquiladoras to properly treat industrial waste, repair leaks, and dump it in a secure area far from residents’ homes. We also secured green spaces and regular neighborhood cleanups for our members who were living in Maquiladora housing, which was surrounded by concrete and burdened with enormous heaps of accumulated waste.
After three years of organizing in Tijuana, we expanded to Mexico City in January 2008. Thus far, our fledgling office has conducted several small scale campaigns around security issues. Our most important work, however, has been building alliances that will allow us to conduct great campaigns in the future. For example, right now ACORN Mexico City is in the process of negotiating with local doctors at the University of Xochimilco, a highly regarded university with a great community health program. With their help, we are devising a community health worker training program that will serve low-income members by providing care AND engaging in advocacy around healthcare issues. We are developing a similar model for other ACORN International offices as well.
With our initial successes in mind, ACORN Mexico is eager to continue to grow its membership and to conduct larger-scale campaigns around all of the important issues that our members face–problems that can only be combated by a well informed citizenry that is willing and able to collectively demand accountability on the part of the governments that serve the. ACORN Mexico is using the strength of an organized majority to create real improvements in their neighborhoods.
ACORN Peru’s mission is to empower low- to moderate-income communities by building a multi-ethnic, multi-regional and multi-issue organization, uniting all Peruvians around their common interests.
The founding office of Community Organizations International, ACORN Peru was born in 2004 in Lima. After 4 years, ACORN Peru now has over 3,000 members actively campaigning for equality and human rights.
Our major successes include:
A campaign against privatization of Peru’s national water system in partnership with the Peruvian Water Worker’s Union (FENTAP) which helped keep the water systems public in a dozen states in the country.
In keeping with our commitment to ensure water access to the poor, ACORN Peru has also worked to bring potable water to the 1-million strong squatters settlement of San Juan de Lurigancho. By negotiating with housing authorities, as well as with the public water company SEDAPAL, we were able to guarantee water access to a section of the population. SEDAPAL has agreed to install stand pipes at appropriate locations, reduce the price of installation and per-family charges, and significantly expand the coverage.
Access to water is directly linked to housing. In this regard, we have worked in collaboration with COPOFRI, a subdivision of Peru’s housing authority. The work with COPOFRI has included educating people of the possibility of gaining formal ownership of their houses. Formal ownership is a key step for household water connections. Water connections have traditionally been denied to people who do not own homes, and also who are hesitant to pay for sewage and pipes because their housing situation is unstable.
Through our collaboration with COPOFRI, ACORN Peru has been helping its members with the complicated administrative process of attaining legal housing tenure. ACORN Peru has also addressed issues of housing through its campaign for fair taxes. Corruption within Peru’s Tax Administration Services caused seizure of several low-income families’ homes. Due to the pressure from ACORN Peru members the Tax Administration Services have created more equitable payment plans and prevented further home seizures.
Finally, ACORN Peru members are campaigning for an independent government for the district of San Juan de Luringacho, a megaslum of 1 million low-income people living on the outskirts of Lima. If San Juan de Lurigancho becomes its own district, all of the tax money that residents contribute will be reinvested in their community, rather than going straight to Lima, and they will be given more control over the way the money is spent. ACORN Peru is campaigning for the full provincialization of SJL and working hard to inform residents about the new rights they will have should the law pass.
In the future, ACORN Peru will continue mobilize communities in Lima and San Juan de Lurigancho to fight for basic needs like housing, clean water and sanitation. ACORN Peru will also continue its work for access to health care, social justice, and security.
ACORN Argentina is improving basic rights in its capital city of Buenos Aires, including the rights to public housing, education, clean air and water by fighting for protection from health hazards caused by traffic pollution and cellular antennas.
ACORN Peru’s mission is to empower low- to moderate-income communities by building a multiracial, multi-regional and multi-issue organization, uniting all Peruvians around their common interests.
ACORN International mobilizes members to take control of their own destinies; Choose their own issues and campaigns, and win or negotiate on their own terms, thus creating amongst them a strong sense of leadership and empowerment.
ACORN International wants to help form solidly rooted community organizations that help historically disadvantaged communities to become powerful actors in their democratic systems.
ACORN International needs your help to keep its offices abroad going strong!
We are doing great work organizing low-income members to demand improvements in their neighborhoods and to achieve improvements on important issues such as housing, healthcare, security, and education.
A dollar may not go a long way here anymore, but in Argentina, Peru, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and India; ACORN International can stretch it to make a difference. $300 would pay half of an organizer’s monthly salary. $150 would pay half a month of rent for our office. $60 would pay for a month printing and copying at our office. Even $10 or $20 would pay for an organizer’s monthly transportation.
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Community Organizations International (formally ACORN International) is a community-based non-profit organization working in a growing number of countries across the world. ACORN International already has an impressive range of achievements across the world.
ACORN International is a federation of member-based community organizations that is active in Canada, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, India,Kenya, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, South Korea, Czech Republic and Italy with partners in the Philippines and emerging affiliates inTrinidad & Tobago. The membership currently numbers approximately 55,000 families.
Since its creation it has focused on a wide variety of local campaigns and initiatives, including fighting for potable water, paved roads, schools and parks in San Juan Laragancho in Lima, Peru, working to organize ragpickers and hawkers in India’s mega-slums,[2] and working to raise the standards for tenants in cities across Canada. Much of ACORN International’s work focuses on mega-slums like Dharavi(Mumbai), San Juan Laragancho (Lima), La Matanza (Buenos Aires), Korogocho (Nairobi), the ITO community (Delhi), Col. Ramon Amalia Amador (Tegucigalpa), and Choloma (San Pedro Sula) among others.
