Santiago    Remittances are the lifeblood of many of the ACORN International communities from Canada to Mexico to India to Kenya, and it was not long into the conversation among all of our organizers before the a campaign and the actions that would bring it to life started to take shape. After years of poking around on this issue around the borders, with various products, and across communities, the members’ patience was exhausted. It is past time for serious work and action here.
Luckily, I had also had a recent — and important — conversation with Francis Calpotura who directs TIGRA, an impressive effort with an increasingly far reach around this issue. We had discussed increasing the involvement of ACORN International as a partner in the campaign and possibly even acting as lead countries in various locations. This alliance could be important in moving forward.
It wasn’t long before HSBC and Citi were both emerging as primary targets with their deep presence in Mexico, Canada and virtually every one of our countries. They are institutions where we have a high degree of familiarity and their inability to even level out the costs within their subsidiaries is grating.
A lot of work and research now needs to be done, but an aggressive timetable to kickoff in mid-June was set and suddenly the meeting was taking an important and wonderful turn for the future of the federated organizations acting as ACORN International.