Development and Nutrition Challenges in Highly Marginalized Yucatecan Communities Jorge Andrés Calderón Quintal and María José Ricalde Parada. Sistema para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia en Yucatán (Integrated Family Development System in Yucatán).

Overview Educational delays in Yucatán affect half the population fifteen years al older. 680,000 people of the same ages who are illiterate. Unemployment forces people to abandon the countryside and to immigrate to urban centers to find new options for improving family incomes. The land, the main tool for subsistence, each day is utilized less and less.

Overview Access to health services is insufficient to assist rural inhabitants. Community-level preventive medicine is insufficient resulting in continued health-deteriorating behaviors. An essential challenges is to eradicate malnutrition an combat obesity in school-aged children.

Integrated Family Development System in Yucatán (DIF YUCATÁN) Who is it? Is the lead social assistance organization. Mission Offer quality social assistance services to the most vulnerable population, contribute to the integral development of the family and promote capacity development.

DIFFERENT COMMUNITY PROGRAM

What Do We Do?  Stimulate community organization processes and encourage social initiative that generates capacity within the community.  Carry out community projects that cover the population's necessities in areas with highly and very highly marginalized communities.

What Do We Do?  Self-managed Community Organization.  Social participation, especially in decision-making.  Formative education for the development of capacities, abilities and attitudes.

What Do We Do? Attention to feeding problems

 Children  Pregnant women  Nursing women  People with different capacities  Population in vulnerable situations

Kitchen garden

Hairless Pig

Turkey raising

Health promotion

Traditional medicine preservation

Educational promotion

Firewood stove Housing improvement.

Challenges Cultivate a co-responsible relationship between society and government. Reduce educational delay and illiteracy. Reduce unemployment. Increase access to health services. Improve nutrition (reduce malnutrition) especially in school-aged children.

Challenges Increase fruit consumption and greenness in areas excluded because of self-consumption. Increase physical activity, especially in schools.

Challenges Help small producers transport their products to places where they can obtain a fair price. Coordinate massive diffusion of information about foundations and financing sources available to communities and local ventures.

Challenges Establish community-approved projects that allow the population to preserve its customs and produce income, preventing home abandonment. Design commercialization channels among local producers, community stores and schools in excluded communities. Revalue the small farm and the small farmer. Make finance sources accessible for community ventures that benefit families and the community.

Challenges Promote alternative energy source, especially in remote communities. Create alliances with companies, institutions to create networks that allow the neediest people to market their products where they can obtain a fair price. Connect responsible managers to local producers so that both benefit from the alliance. Maintain moral commitment among those involved.

Challenges Society and government need to work together in a co- responsible manner to better confront these challenges and to achieve more equal life opportunities in a healthy Yucatán for all its citizens.

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