Our Model

Tia’s Way

The Tia Foundation is a growing, Arizona-based 501 (c) 3 Public Charity dedicated to driving sustainable health solutions in rural Mexico, “Donde no hay Doctor.”

Our Mission

To bring access to lifesaving healthcare and preventative education to the poorest, most remote places in Mexico, where there are no doctors or medicine, using Tia’s self-sustaining, teach-them-to-fish program.

Our Vision

Tia’s communities will work together to attain good health for all using the knowledge, tools, and empowerment acquired through Tia’s program by addressing all areas of wellness need, such as water quality, education, and economic development.

What We Do

We don’t just serve, we educate.

Using a “teach them to fish” model, the Tia Foundation trains and equips community health workers elected by their neighbors to respond to emergencies and provide basic preventative care in remote communities of rural Mexico, where there are no doctors.

We accomplish this permanent, self-sustaining solution for $5 per person because we establish programs that allow local governments to take over continuing education and resupply of the robust medical kits our health workers receive.

Tia currently serves more than 704,000 people. Our health workers provide vaccinations, deliver babies, manage chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension, and offer preventative education to anyone in their community who wants to improve their health and well-being.

Problem Statement

In the poor rural communities of Mexico, even tiny, spartan health clinics are scarce. Most communities rely on infrequent visits from volunteer doctors.

Homes have dirt floors and typically lack electricity, plumbing, or even doors and windows.

Families struggle to put enough food on the table, despite spending long days farming the mountain soil with unmechanized farming tools.

Often providing a clean environment for childbirth, or treating the most basic illnesses and injuries are close to impossible. Since many of these people live more than a twelve hours’ walk from the nearest hospital and only dream of owning a vehicle, women still die in childbirth.

Young children are undernourished and vulnerable to the common cold and dysentery.

Fresh vegetables and meat are hard to come by, while salt- and sugar-laden packaged foods inflict diabetes, hypertension, and malnutrition on entire communities.

The lack of such essential services can mean the difference between life and death, not only for an individual, like a subsistence farmer, but also for a family that relies on his labor to subsist.

The arduous journey over rough mountain roads to the nearest medical care, aggravated by a major laceration or fracture, means a day or two of lost work or worse, a death sentence.

The loss to his family compounds with the resulting downward poverty spiral of malnutrition and disease. All because he can’t just hop in the car and drive a few minutes to an Urgent Care facility.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

A trained health care technician with a modest medical kit down the street can disinfect and bandage cuts, set broken bones, and prevent swelling.

Now, that stabilized farmer can return to work after a bit of rest or make the trip to a regional hospital. His chances of survival, and those of his family, skyrocket.

And, because that health care technician is a trusted member of the community, she becomes the auntie (or Tia) the family visits when kids fall out of trees, mothers worry about prenatal nutrition, and grandparents have trouble getting around.

The family now has basic healthcare for life as well as the chance to keep working toward crossing the poverty line – all for around the price of a Venti Mocha Soy Latte with an extra shot of espresso, per person.

To guarantee long-term village health, the most effective way is to train local health care workers and give them the essential tools necessary to treat common illnesses and injuries.

The key to long-term solutions involves implementing a sustainable program that teaches villagers the skills they need and provides them with links to necessary local resources, so they can become self-determining.

Tia’s Value Proposition

Tia’s focus is on providing sustainable development strategies, not relief. We don’t ‘parent’ or impose a policy of development, but rather, like an aunt, we mentor, assist, advise and motivate villagers to develop their own organic potential and vision for growth. Using our experience and resources, Tia shares knowledge while connecting communities to the means to do for themselves, thus engendering empowerment and respect along with healthier bodies.

The Tia Foundation has developed several International Development consulting relationships that bring invaluable resources to our mission.

Thunderbird School of Global Management

Participation from professors and student interns from a robust school of International Development at the forefront of research in the field ensures we’re up to date on the latest and most healthy International Development consulting methods.

Memberships and relationships with the following entities provide additional support:

• The Border Trade Alliance
• The Arizona-Mexico Commission
• Guidestar
• La Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara’s PMC
• NSHMBA (National Society of Hispanic MBAs)
• World Care
• And other international organizations