SEDEPAC is a Mexican civil society organization, founded in 1983, that works to promote social and environmental initiatives aimed at improving collective wellbeing. The organization provides trainings for groups and popular organizations to strengthen its organizational capacity. SEDEPAC works with indigenous groups, rural farmers, workers, and communities, to strengthen civil society and promote justice and democratic change. SEDEPAC strives to achieve its goal through research and documentation of labor abuses, and through trainings and workshops on sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace, aimed at assisting in the promotion of the rights of women workers in Mexican Maquila factories. These workshops have targeted women workers, academics, governmental representatives, civil society and the press, and have served as successful forums that have fostered debate and the exchange of information, uniting a wide range of actors over one issue. SEDEPAC has also begun to engage in discussions with parents of young workers.
SEDEPAC’s workshops and trainings have helped to raise women’s self-esteem and leadership capacity, as well as their awareness about their rights. These initiatives has also created an interest and commitment on the part of women workers to advance their rights and learn more about the tools that can be used to do so. Workshops have also generated widespread commitment to broaden the sphere of influence that organizations like SEDEPAC have. In addition to the above, SEDEPAC also works to introduce proposals against workplace discrimination in state legislatures and to promote the approval of relevant laws and bills by the government. SEDEPAC remains committed to exhausting all legal and legislative alternatives that will permit the organization to continue pursuing justice for women workers.