Our projects

Consultancy and Training of the Ministry of Social Action (M.A.S.), Neuquén

The purpose of the technical consultancy was to strengthen the Ministry of Social Action of Neuquén as an institution according to three key concepts: Institutional Management, Purpose of the Action and Decentralisation Process.

In the area of Institutional Management we proposed measures to support the implementation of the new institutional structure of the Ministry of Social Action, both regarding the internal structure as well as regarding the society as a whole.

Among others:

The establishment of a system of information and communication.
The creation of a functions and proceedings manual.
An update of the contents of the legal framework.
The creation of a family register.

With regard to the second concept, Purpose of the Action, we made plans for each area, level and programme; A specific strengthening of the action of the Ministry of Social Action within the areas specified in the "Focus on Rights and a Comprehensive Family Approach", which includes: Training of the professionals within an ethical and legal perspective, directed towards the programme administrators and professionals at all levels. In addition, clinical think tanks were developed.

Finally, regarding the Decentralisation Process, a diagnosis of the situation was made; a programme of basic training of the decentralisation team was carried out as well as a programme of local training.

Technical assistance and consultancy for the province of Buenos Aires

Within the framework of the"Support Programme for the Investment in the Social Sectors of the Province of Buenos Aires", the consultancy had as its general objective to analyse the social situation and the social politics proposals of the province.

To implement this objective, we carried out the following tasks:

Methodological proposal regarding the development and implementation of a supervision system of social programmes, specifying its characteristics and components.
Proposal of mechanisms to guarantee information sharing between the national, provincial and municipal programmes; as well as between ministries and city councils.
A formulation of more efficient alternatives to unemployment benefits within the framework of a new paradigm in order to improve the assistance provided to the populations of Greater Buenos Aires in situations of a high degree of vulnerability and with the prospect of remaining in this situation for a long period of time.

Social Situation Observatory in Córdoba province

The consultancy was entrusted by the Ministry of Solidarity of the government of Córdoba and was financed by the Federal Council of Investments (CFI).

The main objective was to construct methodological guidelines in order to be able to deal with new dimensions of the social problematic. The methodology was applied in the neighbourhoods of Ciudad Los Cuartetos-29 de Mayo and Parque Las Rosas with the aim to consolidate the complete development of these new urban conglomerations. We carried out field work, interacted with the population and officials of different governmental areas of the province.

The methodology of the "Social Situation Observatory" supported the Ministry in the following ways:

Providing information to assist the governmental action.
Providing a channel of interaction between the governmental officials and the community.
Providing a space to strengthen the effectiveness, the efficiency and the legitimacy of the governmental actions.

Consultancy for the Ministry of Coordination of Soial Development, the Government of Ecuador - the Inter-American Bank of Development

The consultancy was contracted by the Inter-American Bank of Development (BID) and was employed in the study of the poverty in Ecuador; a study financed through the ATN 8484 between the Inter-American Bank of Development and the Technical Secretariat of the Ministry of Coordination of Social Development. The aim of the project was to study the institutional framework, the decentralisation and citizen participation in Ecuador as well as to analyse the principal changes in social politics introduced by President R. Correa.

To fulfil those objectives, we carried out a project comprising:

An institutional and organisational analysis of the social services as promoters of the improvement of living conditions.
An analysis of laws, regulations and political documents, which determine the operation of the social programmes, the formulation process of the budget for social programmes, as well as the description of all the agents involved in the planting and implementation of social services.
An analysis of the role of territorial institutions.
An analysis of the role of the civil society and the design of the public politics.
An analysis of the existing mechanisms and relevant organisations in order to be able to canalise the participation of the communities in the development of social politics.

Technical assistance and training regarding the follow-up on the Buenos Aires citizenship Programme. For the government of the autonomous city of Buenos Aires and the general management of the Promotion of the Volunteering and the Civil Society

The project, of which the first phase was carried out in 2005, is currently in the third implementation phase. Its objective is to strengthen the "Buenos Aires Citizenship Programme, Within its Right" by recovering the modality of the associated management between the state and the organisations of the civil society in the city of Buenos Aires. The aim of the project is to provide the necessary technical assistance, subvention and training of the personnel who will be implementing the operative measures of the follow-up on the "Buenos Aires Citizenship Programme, Within Its Right". Accordingly, instruments, circuits and mechanisms will be designed for the follow-up on the fulfilment of the commitments assumed by the beneficiaries.

Pablo and Juieta's Box, 2007

The project, which was carried out together with Chicos.net, consisted in the development of a didactic box of materials for the care of the child during the early childhood, including:

Julieta and Pablo dolls
1 board game
1 CD/tape with songs
1 DVD/VHS
4 illustrated books with a guide for the adult.

This material was thought of as a simple and recreational way for boys and girls to approach sexuality-related problems and to acquire skills that let them develop an attitude of self-protection, self-esteem and self-confidence, and to recognise situations that put them into risk, as well as to reveal other potential situations related to sexual abuse.

The programme "Prevention for a Better Quality of Life"

The programme of Prevention for a Better Quality of Life is being carried out together with the Southern Buenos Aires Corporation (Corporación Buenos Aires Sur) and the government of the autonomous city of Buenos Aires. The programme is aimed at the population of non-addicted children between 7 and 12 years of age as well as non-addicted teenagers between 12 and 18 years of age with the aim of strengthening their ability to confront situations of potential risk. It is particularly oriented towards these groups since various studies and official statistics mention the children and youth of the shantytowns and emergency settlements as the groups confronting major risk and vulnerability.

As a consequence, the objectives of the project are:

To complement the action of the Coordination of Social Assistance regarding Addictions (C.A.S.A.) of the government of Buenos Aires, focusing on the disadvantaged neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires.
To work with the populations of those neighbourhoods, with a systematic and comprehensive approach, and with the objective of strengthening the population and the health practices of those who are not already on the threshold of an addiction.
To lift the threshold for awareness and to establish and recognise alarms in order to enable an early detection, with the aim of denaturalising the use of substances and risky practices.
To develop and put at the disposition of the teams of the C.A.S.A. a specific methodology of community prevention as well as corresponding instruments and work materials.
Design and carry out the necessary training.
The necessary strengthening of the social and human capital requires, in this context, initiatives that emphasise the prevention of risks and accordingly, our proposition constitutes an appropriate tool in order to contribute to the achievement of these objectives.

Institutional strenghtening of the National Politics for the Promotion and Defense of the Human Rights (ARG/04/042)

The purpose of the planned activities, as outlined in the framework of this project, is to strengthen the practice and implementation of the human rights and to propel and disseminate the ethics of the human rights promoted by the Secretariat of Human Rights of the Nation.

The Human Rights training programme for the leaders of trade unions and social leaders promotes the training and multiplication of human rights promoters, thereby amplifying and strengthening the impact of the trade unions and social organisations in the construction and implementation of corporate and social responsibility programmes, which promote the human rights. The project is financed by the United Nations Development Programme (PNUD).

GTONG-BM-ARG: Consultancy regarding the World Bank's strategy for Argentina

Within the framework of the consultancy regarding the World Bank's Strategy for Argentina, the Work Group of the Non-Governmental Organisations (GTONG) organised a series of reunions with opinion leaders of the different regions of the country.

In the region of Buenos Aires, the civil association Social Observatory was entrusted with the task of carrying out the project with three central themes: the medium term agenda for Argentina, the role of the World Bank in this debate and the areas prioritised to receive financing from the Bank.

Suriname · Institutional and Organizational SSN Assessment and Capacity Strengthening Plan (ATN-SF-9087-SU)

Thanks to the Non-Refundable Technical Cooperation (ANT/SF-9087-SU), financed by the Inter-American Development Bank, the Social Observatory was, during the period 2005-2006, summoned to contribute to the general methodological framework of the institutional and organisational proposal of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Housing of Suriname (SOZA). Different activities were organised accordingly to the work of the various consultants; field interviews and workshops were carried out; the information was systematised and a final reform was written.

Analysis of Participative Processes in the Design and Implementation of Social Politics (ATN-SF-8887-RG)

Within the framework of the institutional proposal of the Social Observatory, this programme was presented to the Inter-American Development Bank (BID). The BID financed part of the implementation of the project that sought to develop a methodology of observation and an analysis of participative experiences in the region, thereby creating communication material in order to improve the relation between the State and the Civil Society. The project was implemented during twelve months (April 2005 / April 2006) financed by the BID, UNFPA, and the Social Observatory.

Initially, the aim of the project was to identify which factors result in the fact that the thinking of the state does not always coincide with the demands, necessities and cultural specificities of the persons that interact in the same space as the state, even though they have the same objectives; a fact that gives rise to conflictive situations in the area of social politics. There was the sensation that a certain amount of frustration, on behalf of the state as well as on behalf of the civil society, was producing a loss of confidence in the potential of the participative component of the social programmes. Accordingly, we thought that the systematic observation of the experiences in the region, considering the cultural and organisational characteristics of the diverse communities in their interaction with the state, would provide the elements in order to enable us to construct tools to help clarify - by means of employing an adequate methodology of observation, analysis and communication - the objectives of good social policies.

For us, good social policies are those that are capable of solving the transitional or structural shortages, of modifying the environmental and social conditions in which the poverty emerges, of strengthening the individuals in order for them to be active co-players and transform positively their own life and that of their families. In short, it is the public politics that generates practices which, in turn, generate a better social inclusion.

Our vision is that in every act of the government and/or the citizens it is possible to improve the democracy and the institutions, by breaking up some of the structural conditions that lead to poverty and exclusion.

In order to achieve this aim we proposed, through an interdisciplinary team and with a participative dynamics approach, the development of a methodology that incorporates relevant theoretic approaches and serves, through a strategy of adequate communication, to promote new interventions in the social field.

The project was initiated with the construction of an analytical framework, for the purpose of which various authors were consulted, thereby identifying concepts that would be useful for the comprehension of the problem. At the same time, the cases of participative experiences managed by the state in the Latin America region were revised with the objective of choosing some of them to be analysed in detail.

It should be clarified that the project did not have as its objective to make new theory, neither to carry out a thorough field research, but to benefit from the existing knowledge and experience in order to create management tools and social intervention tools that could be communicated adequately and appropriated easily by decision makers of public politics. This conceptual framework was at the Validation Workshop (Buenos Aires, 5th to 7th October 2006) put into contrast by a small group of people, selected for having been principal actors in participative experiences in the design and implementation of social politics managed by the state in the Latin American region.

Shortly after, a field work was carried out in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Bolivia and Chile) in diverse cultural contexts in each of the countries. Based on these data, a specific communication material will be designed, presenting an innovative product and giving access to the work carried out by the team and its members in the different phases of the project.

External evaluation of the Programme VIGI+A in the areas of Epidemiological Vigilance, Disease Control and Health Promotion

The project was carried out during 2005 in association with United Groups of the South (Grupo Unidos del Sud) and Voxiva. The objectives of the consultancy were: To carry out a synthesis of the project results regarding public sanitation management in the relation between the nation and the province; to revise and analyse the fulfilment of the objectives of the VIGI+A programme (especially those referring to epidemiological vigilance, disease control and health promotion) and to analyse the experienced difficulties and conflicts, thereby systematising the learning experience.

Observatory for Social Inclusion. Methodology and Tools for the Creation of Local Observatories for Social Inclusion

During 2004 the Project "Observatory for Social Inclusion, Methodologies and Tools for the Creation of Local Observatories for Social Inclusion" was carried out within the framework of the URBAL Programme of the European Union - Network 10. The project, financed by the municipality of Ville de Saint Denis, France, was carried out under the coordination of the government of the autonomous city of Buenos Aires.

The results provided us with a diagnosis of the processes of exclusion in each city, of the set of actions carried out in each territory in favour of the inclusion and an evaluation of the available tools to analyse and measure the phenomena. This diagnosis enables each city to understand its specific situation and to get familiar with the analytical tools developed by the other cities associated with the project.

Government of the province of San Luis

We designed and implemented a comprehensive programme with the aim of optimising the administration of the social resources of the province, which included the following components:

Social diagnosis of the province, identifying the principal social problems and their causes, by geographical area and income level.
Definition of a priority system for the social intervention including goals and objectives.
Evaluation of the administration system of the social resources and proposal of an alternative system that incorporates criteria of efficiency in accordance with the global objectives of social politics.
Design of a human resources model and intensive training of the officials and employees of the system.
Identification of the priorities by thematic area:
Training of the leaders of the programme, support regarding the definition of aims, objectives and technologies; and supervision of the execution of the programme.
Design of a comprehensive strategy of interaction with the organisations of the civil society and support during the execution of the strategy. This includes, among others:
Training of officials in the installation of an area related with the organisations of the civil society.
Installation of an office related to the organisations of the civil society.
Design of the Provincial Programme of Social Volunteering.
Training of organisations of the civil society in subject matters related to social volunteering.
Installation of time banks in the principal cities of the province.
Installation of a supervision system of the social programmes with periodic reports on their execution.
A comprehensive reform of the system of prevention and assistance of minors at risk, including the modification of the provincial legislation.

Duration of the project: One year.

Government of La Pampa province

We designed and implemented a comprehensive programme of support to the social areas of high priority for the province of La Pampa:

A comprehensive reform of the system of prevention and assistance to minors at risk, including the modification of the provincial legislation; prioritising the participation of the organisations of the civil society.
Programme of awareness-raising and training of officials of the provincial state in alternative models of social politics, with special emphasis on the relation between the state and the civil society.
Training of project employees in twelve cities of the province regarding the implementation of a model of Comprehensive Prevention of Addictions. Graphical material was produced for the training courses in prevention of addictions destined for teenagers, officials and instructors.
Duration of the project: 8 months.

Government of the autonomous city of Buenos Aires

Strengthening of the leadership of the city government.
Proposal of a new Social Institutional Operation in the government of the city: development of the structure of the social department, proposal of programmes to attend to the critical sectors, model for the administration of human resources.

Government of the Dominican Republic

Providing consultancy to the President and his office regarding the institutional re-design of the social area and deciding on priorities (February 2001).

Government of the Republic of Perú

Providing consultancy to the President of the Republic regarding the institutional design of the administration of social resources and deciding on priorities (November 2001).