What we do
The City of Joy Foundation has consolidated its role as promotor of an integrated response to the community’s pressing social needs. As a second tier organization, we focus on gauging social needs, proposing intervention strategies and working with specialized service-providing charities to implement them.
Our goal is to motivate, facilitate and provide support for these organizations so that they may fulfil their potential and, in this way, improve the quality of life of the most vulnerable individuals and families, and by extension, of the community as a whole.
The Foundation plays the role of ‘promoter’ and ‘facilitator’ of the City of Joy, which is designed to provide an integrated response to the poverty, marginalization and relative scarcity of public services which thousands of families in Cancun face every day. Today the City of Joy consists of ten different Homes and Centers operated by nine different charitable organizations. Our 12 acre site is located on the outskirts of Cancun, 15 minutes from the center, allowing the people we help to access the services easily.
Rather than directly operating the Homes and Centers in the City of Joy, the Foundation “loans” them to organizations which have a proven track record in serving a particular group of people. We strive to further build the capacity of these like-minded organizations through effective and long-lasting support, divided into three main areas:
Construct spaces: we identify and measure the demand for services and develop responsive strategies. We select a capable organization that shares our mission and work with them to build the facilities they need and develop the services they will offer to the beneficiary group.
Generate synergies: We prioritise activities that generate mutual benefits for the organizations that work in the City of Joy, from the distribution of food by the Bread & Blanket Shelter, to the shared use of the Multipurpose Center, to the referral of beneficiaries to sister organizations for further support. There is no doubt that team work allows to achieve improved support of the people we serve.
Strengthen actions: We accompany the organizations in the City of Joy in a process of capacity building, understood as a collaborative process which involves financial and inkind subsidies, information and training services. Our staff are available to advise and support all organizations, while the Community Services team provides professional legal, medical and counselling services.