The Inter-American Foundation is prioritising civic engagement, human rights, and community resource mobilisation in Latin America with a grant to Federación Red Argentina para la Cooperación Internacional (RACI).

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‘Restrictions to civil society and civic engagement across many Latin American countries, [and are] reducing government and private sector transparency and accountability by dampening citizen oversight,’ said the Foundation in a statement.

To combat trends to weaken participatory democratic processes and increasing economic and social exclusion of vulnerable communities, the Inter-American Foundation has awarded RACI a multi-year grant of $450,000 to strengthen the organisation’s Latin American and Caribbean Regional Centre for Innovation for Change, as well as its ecosystem of civil society actors.

The LAC Innovation for Change Centre is a network of civil society organizations from 16 Latin American and Caribbean countries dedicated to developing bottom-up approaches that promote transparency and strengthen civic space with scalable social impact.

The activities in this cooperative agreement will promote dialogue and peer-to-peer learning to promote greater public and private sector transparency. It will also strengthen the organizational development, advocacy, and fundraising capacities of the Centre, alongside civil society and grassroots organizations throughout the region, so they can identify and scale local solutions to key challenges like violence against women and strengthening climate resilience.