The Vines (Fall 2022)

Project Background

The Vines Foundation is a catalyst for positive change in Tunuyan, a city in the West of the province of Mendoza, Argentina, exploring ways to empower our community to enhance health, end hunger and overcome hardship, as well as promote sustainable livelihoods. As the philanthropic arm of The Vines, an Argentine farming, winemaking and hospitality company (vinesofmendoza.com, vinesresortandspa.com) with deep connections to international resources through our clients in the US, Europe, and Brazil, the Foundation is leveraging these resources to meet the immediate and long-term needs of the local community. Most importantly, we are building capacity within our community and the organizations we work with, and seeking to engage community members and organizations, local and national businesses, and the municipal government to address complex challenges. 

Definition of Opportunity

In the fall of 2021, and in the spring of 2022, the Vines Foundation partnered with the University of Notre Dame Development Advisory Teams (DAT) to create a strategic and inspirational mission and vision statement for the Foundation, which will serve as guiding principles for the foundation as it expands its community work. We seek to communicate through our work the importance of accompaniment and co-creation, in which we see our community members as partners who are the first and best teachers capable of enacting change and creating opportunities for their families and neighborhoods. Working together with the community and the DAT, we developed strategies to bring together an effective working/community group of local leaders to guide the development process.

Currently, the community engagement efforts of the Foundation are structured around:

Engaging in co-creative efforts to realize sustainable projects in the community.

Maintaining and developing relationships with community members to strengthen a chain of transparent communication and feedback throughout project development and implementation.

Creating a network of local and regional organizations and businesses to partner with the comedores to allow for simultaneous investment in capacity-building and increased community independence. Develop best practices for increasing presence of Social Corporate Responsibility (RSE) in alliance’s work.

Currently, the project-based efforts of the Foundation are structured around:

Providing food weekly to the comedores (soup kitchens) of Tunuyan, which serve as community spaces where children can receive meals during the week and interact with each other.

Increasing comedor capacity through workshops and educational and recreational opportunities to be held on-site.

Developing a community garden at 3 different comedores, which will serve as a pilot project for the community to grow in independence and learn new skills.

Maintaining a dog refuge/shelter on property grounds to care for, vaccinate, and facilitate adoption for stray dogs. We are also seeking to evaluate resource dedication towards facilitating spaying/neutering for street dogs in the community

Definition of Success

Through working with a fall 2022 DAT, we hope to generate interest, excitement and actions in support of The Vines Foundation.  We plan to firmly establish the base for expansion and replication of our successful projects and develop strategies to increase the monetary and non-monetary resources and capacities of the foundation.  

Meet the Team

Final Deliverable

The Vines Fall 2022 Final Deliverable by Joseph Drey on Scribd

The Vines (Spring 2022)

Project Background

The Vines Foundation is a catalyst for positive change in Tunuyan, Mendoza, exploring ways to empower our community to enhance health, end hunger and overcome hardship, as well as promote sustainable livelihoods. As the philanthropic arm of The Vines, an Argentine farming, winemaking and hospitality company (vinesofmendoza.com, vinesresortandspa.com) with deep connections to international resources through our clients in the US, Europe and Brazil, The Vines Foundation is leveraging these resources to meet the immediate and long-term needs of the local community. Most important, we are building capacity within our community and the organizations we work with, and seeking to engage community members and organizations,  local and national businesses, along with the government to solve complex challenges.

Definition of Opportunity

In the fall 2021, for the first time, the Vines Foundation partnered with a DAT to begin to create a strategic and inspirational mission and vision statement for the Foundation, which will serve as the foundation expands its community work for at least the next decade.  We hope that two of the students that worked on the project, Lucie Kneip (lkneip@nd.edu) and Carson Krol (ckrol@nd.edu), will continue to be engaged with the DAT this spring and as interns this summer at The Vines in Mendoza.

As a next step, we want to expand on the work completed to identify solid guiding principles, and meaningfully engage prospective donors and partners to unite a force for good. In the end, we want to become a model for sustainable development upon which others can base their initiatives to effectively serve the needs of the broader region and country of Argentina.

 During 2022, we aim to move from the mission and vision development phase to the execution phase by:

·  Creating a structure and strategies to bring together an effective working/community group of local leaders guiding the development process and creating goals; and an advisory board of donors and global stakeholders.

·  Developing a strategy to continue to support the 10 community kitchens we have been helping and a plan to transition that support into a more sustainable operation, likely by bringing in partners from the community and region.

·  Outlining a plan to evaluate the feasibility of, and if it is feasible, implement the “Rosario project” of community development in Tunuyan.

· Creating a best practices document for the dog rescue shelter at The Vines, and the evaluation of a mobile spay/neuter clinic.

Definition of Success

Through the work with a spring 2022 DAT, we hope to generate interest, excitement and actions in support of The Vines Foundation. This might include providing hands-on volunteer experiences for individuals to become connected to the mission of The Vines Foundation.  We plan to move from the theoretical to the execution stage, developing the initial parts of a strategic plan.  We will build on initial dialogues with members of the local community that DAT members carried out to explore further opportunities for becoming an incubator of new thoughts, strategies and methods to identify and solve the ever-changing needs of the local community.

Meet the Team

Final Deliverable

Vital Strategies (Fall 2021)

Project Background

 Vital Strategies is a global health organization that believes every person should be protected by a strong public health system. We work with governments and civil society in 73 countries to design and implement evidence-based strategies that tackle their most pressing public health problems. Our goal is to see governments adopt promising interventions at scale as rapidly as possible.

Birth registration has been called the “first right of a child” as it is the first official recognition of an individual after birth.  UNICEF has estimated that four out of ten children who are born do not have their births registered.  80 percent of the children whose births are not registered are born in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. It is also estimated that less than half of all deaths occurring in the world are registered. Additionally, the cause of death in far fewer of these cases is medically certified and recorded.  In the context of the Covid-19 sweeping the world, this is a major obstacle to focusing attention and resources to contain and prevent the spread of the pandemic.  

Functional civil registration systems and vital statistics (CRVS) systems provide the fertility and mortality statistics including the cause of death estimates which help to plan, deliver and monitor health and social development programs.   They are thus a key element in the governance mechanisms tracking progress towards national and international commitments such as the Sustainable Development Programmes.  However, the results in terms of timely registration of all birth and deaths; the ability to record the proximate and underlying causes of deaths; publish national vital statistics reports drawing data from civil registration sources are all far from satisfactory in most countries in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia. Birth registration rates have seen a significant improvement in several countries in South Asia and in some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.  But death registration rates and the generation of data from causes of death still remain a major concern. 

Definition of Opportunity

The objective is to move the conversation beyond the constituencies that are traditionally engaged in this area (demographers, statisticians, medical professionals) to stakeholders in the area of governance, public policy, public administration, the general public, etc.

Definition of Success

We hope that the team will work on developing, prototyping, and testing communications vehicles that the most effective communication vehicles to reach these audiences? Can we articulate the CRVS concerns of practitioners and scholars through opinion pieces that can take the content in such articles to a wider audience?

Meet the Team

Final Deliverables

The Vines [Strategy] (Fall 2021)

Project Background

The Vines Foundation is a catalyst for positive change in Tunuyan, Mendoza, empowering our community to enhance health, end hunger and overcome hardship, as well as promote sustainable livelihoods. 

As the philanthropic arm of The Vines, an Argentine farming, winemaking and hospitality company (vinesofmendoza.com, vinesresortandspa.com) with deep connections to international resources through our clients in the US, Europe and Brazil, The Vines Foundation is leveraging these resources to meet the immediate and long term needs of the local community. Most importantly, however, we are building capacity within our community and the organizations we work with, and seeking to engage local and national businesses, along with the government to solve complex challenges. 

Definition of Opportunity

 The Vines Foundation is interested in partnering with DAT to create a strategic and inspirational mission and vision statement, which will serve as the foundation for our community work for at least the next decade. We will also identify solid guiding principles, and meaningfully engage prospect donors and partners to unite a force for good. 

Definition of Success

Generate interest, excitement and action in support of The Vines Foundation. Provide hands-on volunteer experiences for individuals to become connected to the mission of The Vines Foundation. 

Be an incubator of new thoughts, strategies and methods to identify and solve the ever-changing needs of the local community. Become a model upon which others can base their initiatives to effectively serve the needs of the broader region and country of Argentina. 

Meet the Team