Context
Despite the fact that UNDP ranks Panama in countries with high human development (UNDP 2016), national studies and the World Bank consider Panama to be one of the countries with the highest rate of economic inequality (UNICEF).
Children are the first victims of these inequalities, with 30% of children living in extreme poverty.
Santa Ana, a historical community adjacent to the current flourishing San Felipe district, suffers from years of deep-rooted exclusion. Only 24% of the population have completed secondary education and 46% are unemployed. Three quarters of Santa Ana's population earn less than 600$ per month, 40% less than 100$.
Our action in Panama
Addressing the multidimensional causes of poverty: VillageFXB Economic and Community Development Project
In 2017, FXB joined the initiative Building a community for sustainable change – Building Community for Sustainable Change (known as Santa Ana Lidera) which aimed to transform the living conditions of the community of Santa Ana in Panama City. The aim was to address deep-rooted forms of exclusion through targeted interventions with teenage mothers, low-income women entrepreneurs and poor families, while training community leaders to support the impact of these interventions.
As part of this partnership, FXB has implemented its VillageFXB poverty reduction methodology for 60 families in the Santa Ana community. This holistic approach was introduced as early as 1991 to address simultaneously the underlying factors: economic poverty, malnutrition, lack of access to health care, lack of access to education in the broadest sense of the term, and unsafe housing and the environment.