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The Ford Foundation Awards Third Grant to Americas Society

Americas Society is proud to announce a Ford Foundation grant to continue research under its social inclusion program, with a focus on natural resource extraction and its effects on communities in Latin America.

New York, May 29, 2012—Americas Society is honored to announce the Ford Foundation’s generous award of a one-year grant of $212,420 for Americas Society to continue research under its social inclusion program. The expanded Ford Foundation support will allow Americas Society to broaden its activities to include a project that highlights and reflects on processes of political, economic, and social changes that took place in the last half-century in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“We are sincerely grateful to the Ford Foundation for its generous support, and are honored that they continue to choose Americas Society and its policy journal Americas Quarterly as partners to promote social inclusion in the Americas. This newly awarded grant will allow us to build upon a program that is already highly regarded by academics, civil society leaders, and government officials alike,” said Americas Society President and CEO Susan Segal.

Americas Society started its Social Inclusion Program in 2010 with support from the Ford Foundation. The research seeks to highlight the complexity, challenges, and advances of social inclusion; expand the debate over economic and political change to include previously marginalized groups; and reflect on how governments and businesses can address the systemic problem of social exclusion.

In the first two years of the program, Americas Society conducted and published policy-oriented research on education, youth and market access, health care, and political representation of indigenous and Afro-Latino minorities. The renewed grant from the Ford Foundation will allow Americas Society to focus on the increasingly salient topic of natural resource extraction and its effects on social inclusion. “As global demand for commodities has expanded, more countries in the region are actively seeking to increase investment in natural resource extraction, raising the question of what governments and businesses can do to avoid the age-old resource curse and ensure that revenue and investments serve to improve social programs and promote broader economic development,” says Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy for Americas Society and editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly (AQ).

Under the grant, Americas Society will use its multiple platforms—Americas Quarterly, the AQ website americasquarterly.org, the organization-wide website as-coa.org, and all related social media outlets—to engage readers and constituents on these questions and to present the findings in a way that makes them accessible to allow a broader audience.

For further information about the Americas Society’s work on social inclusion, please contact Adriana La Rotta at alarotta@as-coa.org or (212) 277-8384.

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