The FEMSA Foundation was created in 2008 on the premise that a sustainable company can only exist with sustainable communities. 

FEMSA Foundation

FEMSA recognizes and embraces the opportunity to take a bold leadership position on issues for which we can use our platform to positively contribute to society. We have a long history of actively working to build trust with our stakeholders through our operations, policies, and community investments. As such, the FEMSA Foundation is an important vehicle through which we generate economic, social, and environmental value.

The FEMSA Foundation’s strategic agenda is organized into three pillars of impact: Sustainable Development, Early Childhood Development, and the Cultural Program. For each, we are facilitating successful models of project implementation, knowledge exchange, and opportunities to present best practices from subject matter experts.

Sustainable Development
Over the last 11 years, the FEMSA Foundation has supported environmental value creation by investing in projects that ensure the sustainable management of water in the communities where we operate. In 2019, we continued to foster collective action through strategic partnerships to create greater impact. For example:

• Water Funds: First launched in 2011, FEMSA Foundation is part of the Latin American Water Funds Partnership (LAWFP), an agreement to contribute to water security in Latin America and the Caribbean through the creation and expansion of Water Funds–or organizations that promote sustainable watershed management through stakeholder engagement, informed decision-making, and responsible governance. To date, 25 Water Funds have been launched in eight Latin American countries, with 15 more in development. The LAWFP has also created a methodology and is testing a new system for the development and acceleration of Water Funds throughout the region.

In 2019, the LAWFP began to identify strategic ways to collaboratively multiply its impact at three levels of engagement: locally, nationally, and regionally. For example, in Colombia, a recently formed coalition—made up of all nine Water Funds in the country, along with private sector partners and academia—are working directly with the national government in support of a national water security plan. Regional action plans include collective action by all Water Funds. These and other important initiatives were discussed at the fourth Water Funds Summit in July 2019, which was attended by more than 300 relevant stakeholders to promote knowledge exchange and multiply collaborative impact. Learn more here

• Lazos de Agua: Originally launched in 2013 to improve sanitation and access to safe water across Latin America, Lazos de Agua is now in its second phase with a focus on promoting behavior change through social art. In 2019, the program benefited people in five Latin American countries through close work with our strategic partners—including the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), The Coca-Cola Foundation, and One Drop—to continue improving our community engagement approach and ensure on-the-ground understanding of pressing issues and concerns.
• IDB-FEMSA Award: Under the premise that the biggest challenges produce the most innovative solutions, the IDB-FEMSA Award recognizes entrepreneurs and start-ups that are tackling tough societal problems related to water, sanitation, and solid waste. On its 10th anniversary in 2019, winners presented solutions that filter drinking water through a kitchen faucet attachment; capture and reuse the cold water normally wasted while waiting for a hot shower; and extract water from humidity in the air to use for cooking and drinking.
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Over the years, the FEMSA Foundation’s environmental programming has grown from water conservation and access, to water security and innovation. Recently, we have begun to explore how to further evolve our platform by focusing not only on water issues, but more broadly on sustainable development. During 2020, we will examine the most effective ways that we can further apply FEMSA Foundation’s successful models of collective action and knowledge sharing to these topics, including food and plastic waste, as well as the water-energy-food nexus.

Early Childhood Development
FEMSA Foundation has long believed that when children have the means to harness their full potential, communities can be transformed. Our strategy to nurture early childhood development is focused in three key areas:

• Building resilient communities: To support a child’s opportunity to become a productive, secure, and economically strong member of society, we participate in projects across Latin America that seek to improve the cognitive, linguistic, motor, and socio-emotional abilities of children in vulnerable communities. For example, ¡Listos a Jugar! is a cross-platform educational program—created by Sesame Workshop, with the support of FEMSA Foundation—which promotes the development of healthy habits in preschool children related to eating, playing, and personal care. The program uses technology to bring useful content to caregivers and educators through episodes and songs starring Sesame characters, as well as a microsite and an application for mobile phones and tablets. In 2019, a community outreach strategy was developed to extend classroom learning to the home through accompanying activities that reinforce classroom lessons. In 2019, we benefited more than 360 educators and nearly 4,440 children in 25 childcare centers in Mexico. In Brazil, we reached nearly 134 educators and more than 3,400 children in 14 childcare centers. With the distribution of the facilitator’s guide, we reached more than 10,700 children in Colombia, more than 670 children in Guatemala, and more than 230 children in Panama.
• Helping employers support working parents: In collaboration with the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO by its Spanish acronym), we supported a first-of-its-kind research project in Latin America in 2019 to better understand the state of “family-friendly” policies available to employees of Latin American companies, such as parental leave benefits, childcare support, and access to educational information. Our findings indicate that companies who are investing in human capital by offering parental benefits not only secure higher rates of employee satisfaction and retention, but are also making important contributions to society by helping parents raise children who will grow up to succeed in a 21st century workforce. We hosted an event in October 2019 to further discuss these issues with representatives from more than 40 companies.
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• Expanding public policy awareness: In 2019, we continued our participation—along with more than 440 other organizations in Mexico—in the Pact for Early Childhood, an advocacy initiative calling on the government to enact policies that support early childhood development. As part of this effort, for the second year in a row, we gathered more than 45 public officials and decision-makers for the seminar, “Policies for the future: Well-being from early childhood”, with the goal of creating increased awareness about the importance of supporting early childhood as a pillar of success for families in Mexico. Together with the Tecnológico de Monterrey School of Government and Public Transformation, LEGO Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, the September 2019 meeting fostered the creation of a community of leaders who will be better prepared to strengthen programs and public policies for the future of all.
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Cultural Program
An important part of how FEMSA generates social value rests on the development of projects that engage communities through encounters with the arts. For more than 40 years, the FEMSA Collection has showcased more than 1,200 works of Modern and Contemporary Latin American art through a series of exhibitions and a loan program. In 2019, the FEMSA Collection organized twelve exhibitions, which took place in multiple cities in Mexico and drew more than 100,000 visitors to the museum for various activities, including 21 workshops and dialogues related to exhibit programming. We also maintain a large art loan program, which loaned works in 2019 from our Collection to international institutions such as Di Donna Galleries in New York City, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, Florida.

For more than 25 years, the FEMSA Cultural Program has also presented the FEMSA Biennial, a unique platform of collaborative events and exhibitions that recognize, strengthen, stimulate, and disseminate artistic creation across Mexico. During its latest run in Zacatecas from 2017 to 2019, the XIII edition of the FEMSA Biennial evolved from an artistic contest to a curatorial model that encouraged local artists to collaborate with national and international peers to produce art around a specific subject. Their work was then exhibited for four months, during which the host city celebrated art through exhibitions, performances, publications, conferences, workshops, and educational events that were open to the art community and the general public. Looking ahead to our next edition, we continue to build on our successful model of engaging with local artists and students, sponsoring artists from other regions, and offering community seminars and workshops. During 2019, we organized 26 art residencies, as well as five discussions with artists and members of the Curatorial Team in Morelia and Pátzcuaro.

Finally, from 2016 to 2019, the Cultural Program sponsored Estancia FEMSA – Casa Luis Barragán, an artistic center in Mexico City at the former residence of Luis Barragán, one of the most influential Mexican architects of the twentieth century. After completing the projected cycle of artistic programming, Estancia FEMSA finalized its activities in December 2019. During the past three years, thousands of people have visited this UNESCO World Heritage Site to gain a better understanding of both art history and modern artistic disciplines.