Working to make global poverty history
CFACT's SEFED-Program:
a new template for international development
In September 2003, CFACT activists attended the World Trade Organization's Fifth Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico. That meeting provided many opportunities to address such hot issues as genetically modified foods, global warming, and clean water. During the conference, CFACT was transformed from a group that merely writes and talks about development issues, to a group that also takes a hands-on approach to these topics, when it led an international coalition to distribute two tons of food to the impoverished village of Valle Verde near Cancun. That was the beginning of our "Adopt-a-Village" campaign, which in 2005, took much clearer shape with the completion of a project plan called the Social Entrepreneurship and Free-Market Environmentalism Demonstration Program, or SEFED.
SEFED begins with the premise that even the world's poorest can make strides toward prosperity when given the opportunity -- if others with more of the world's goods will treat them as potential partners, listen to their dreams, and help turn them into realities. The social entrepreneurship side of SEFED thus seeks to identify and empower people in local communities to devise their own plans for economic growth and environmental protection and to join with them as partners in service. The free-market environmental development side builds on the premise that entrepreneurs can be even more successful long term if they develop their businesses in ways that are compatible with, or even beneficial to, the best interests of the people who live nearby, which includes maintaining a healthy environment.
In August 2005, CFACT returned to Valle Verde to officially launch the program; met with government, business, academic, and local leaders to build its first local SEFED network; gave out four solar ovens and food parcels to needy families in Valle Verde as a symbolic first step of progress; and produced a 7-minute video focusing on Valle Verde to help explain the kinds of problems SEFED will seek to solve on a global level. CFACT Collegian students also sprang into action to raising money on their campuses for relief efforts after Hurricane Wilma delivered a terrible Category-5 blow directly to Cancun in October.
To read more about the philosophical background of SEFED, click here.
To read more about CFACT's return to Valle Verde, click here.
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