North American Integration & Development (NAID) Center

The NAID Center is collaborating with several organizations to facilitate relationships between Mexican hometown associations based in California and development projects in migrants’ communities of origin.  The general objective is to help increase job opportunities and productivity in rural communities affected by high migration by promoting and supporting business activities of groups of small scale producers in the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacán.  More specifically, the goal is to establish a model for the productive use of remittances through the interaction between producers in communities of origin and migrant entrepreneurs.  This involves improving business skills of groups of producers needed to turnout and market agricultural and micro industrial products, providing access to markets and information, and facilitating access to financing leveraged by the capital contributed by transnational migrants in the United States. Among the organizations with which the NAID has more recently collaborated to achieve these goals are the Fundación Para la Productividad en el Campo (FPPC) and AMUCCS.  Funding for these projects described below was provided by the InterAmerican Development Bank, Ford Foundation and the RM Johnson Foundation.

The NAID Center also recognized that given the transnational context in which these migrants work and live, that improving their financial circumstances in the US also affects their ability to contribute to development efforts in their communities of origin.  To this end, NAID has also worked with US financial institutions to facilitate their outreach and servicing of “unbanked” migrants in California including the California Credit Union League (CCUL) and four of its member community credit unions. As migrant financial transactions and needs are also transnational, the NAID facilitated institutional relationships between the CCUL, its member credit unions and AMUCCS as well.  Funding for this project described below was provided by the Ford Foundation and the RM Johnson Foundation.

“Immigrant Remittance Corridors” (RG-M1075).  The NAID Center received official notice in May 2006 that it has been awarded a contract for $430,500 from the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) and United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Programme for the NAID project titled, “Immigrant Remittance Corridors.”

"Investment of Remittances for Development in a Migratory Economy" Report on Activities of the UCLA North American Integration and Development Center on the subcontract with Fundacion para la Productividad en el Campo for the Inter-American Development Bank Project.

"Developing Mexican and Salvadoran Immigrant Participation in Credit Unions via Home Town Associations and Remittance Programs." Final report on the “First Accounts Project” collaboration between the North American Integration and Development (NAID) Center and California Credit Union League (CCUL), funded by the Ford Foundation and RMJ Foundation.