THE UNIVERSAL RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT
The IberoAmerican Foundation for Development( FIDE) focuses its efforts on development cooperation in communities that find it difficult to exercise their basic rights
The IberoAmerican Foundation for Development( FIDE), founded in Guadalajara, Castilla, Spain in 1991, is realising its dream to equip people with the knowledge, methods and means to achieve development from below and from within. We have drawn up an ideal for sustained action, explained in the 17 books written by Antonio Vereda del Abril, President of FIDE. We have applied this to cooperative projects in Latin America and Spain through programs of communication, education, citizen activism and awarenessraising for development aimed at children, young people and university students. FIDE Foundation has been working for 22 years on the eradication of poverty, the promotion of democracy and the right of all people to develop.
The Foundation’ s mission coincides with the values that inspired the Millennium Development Goals( MDGs), and its achievements have supported the Goals:
MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
With more than 160 cooperative projects for development, which have contributed to the eradication of poverty for more than 4.5 million people in Latin America.
MDG2: Achieve universal primary education
In the indigenous communities of Cochabamba in Bolivia and the Peruvian Amazon.
MDG3: Promote gender equality and empower women
With the strengthening of the political, social and individual capacities of more than 70,000 indigenous women in Bolivia and Peru.
MDG5: Improve maternal health
With the example of‘ vertical births’, which was awarded the global prize for good practice – mother and child by the World Health Organization.
From left: FIDE President Antonio Vereda del Abril, Queen Sofía of Spain and Dr Muhammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen Bank of Copan and Santa Barbara in Honduras, for 32,000 inhabitants in 30 rural communities.
Don Antonio Vereda del Abril, president and founder of FIDE, has contributed significantly to the achievement of MDG8: Develop a global framework for development with‘ development from below and from within,’ which takes the wishes of the majority and‘ Management Centers of R & D + i‘ to configure networks of solidarity, knowledge, culture, communication, education, micro-credits, technology, entrepreneurs, access to markets and social benefits. He conceived the initiative‘ Debt for Development’, a model for debt exchange that was adopted by the Spanish Government’ s official development program. He began promoting micro-credit in Lima in 1988, he initiated‘ communal banks’ in Honduras and Bolivia, and has supported the formation of micro-finance institutions in El Salvador and Honduras. In Spain, FIDE is promoting a micro-credit fund to tackle unemployment.
MDG7: Ensure environmental sustainability
With a special focus on water: during the last 10 years we have developed an ambitious program for access to healthy drinking water in the districts.