Founding Organizations
The founding organizations of FOCUS Partnerships bring decades of experience engaging with Cuba, leveraging deep institutional knowledge and long-standing relationships to advance responsible, collaborative U.S.–Cuba programming.
For more than 15 years, CAI has successfully partnered with Cuban changemakers, local communities, NGOs, scientists, universities and government institutions to bring about innovative, transformative solutions to our most pressing social and ecological challenges. Since 2015 CAI has worked closely with partners in Cuba to facilitate courses, conferences, workshops and collaborative research that has included the participation of more than 200 farmers, leading academics, NGOs and donors, mostly from the US and Puerto Rico, but also from the wider LAC region, who work at the intersection of climate resilience, sustainable food systems, biodiversity conservation, new economies, just transitions, and sustainable livelihoods. CAI is currently working to strengthen local governance for the scaling up of agroecological, sustainable food systems in the province of Sancti Spiritus and is also supporting a school garden programming in the Isla de la Juventud through the Isla Verde local development project, which is also an annual film festival. CAI’s recent award winning documentary, Our Agroecology, Our Future, was screened at this year’s festival.
For 24 years, Environmental Defense Fund has been a trusted partner and resource for policymakers, managers, scientists, fishermen, community leaders and NGOs in Cuba. Working across a decades-long political divide, we have persisted in crafting successful partnerships aimed at protecting Cuba’s vibrant coastal and marine resources and the people and communities who depend upon them. The vision we share is that Cuba is thriving, with resilient and productive coastal ecosystems that support sustainable fisheries and other enterprises, a growing and inclusive economy, and more prosperity, justice and well-being.
FCS has worked, for more than thirty years, with leading nongovernmental organizations, states, government representatives, communities, and individuals to engage societies around the world with the United States through diplomatic and cultural exchange. FCS’s New Cuba Arts Connection program aims to open and maintain communication between the US and Cuba by 1) bringing major American artists to the island; 2) supporting an extensive photography initiative on the island with their partner FotoFest and 3) bringing Cuban arts professionals to US cultural institutions to visit, intern, and forge important connections.
Friends of Havana (FoH) was established in response to a request from the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana (OHCH) in 2015 to provide assistance to Cuban urban planners and architects as they plan the future of Havana. In 2017 FoH organized their first meeting “Hablemos de La Habana.” FoH has convened several follow-up meetings since then and has also supported several local development projects in Cuba including Centro Bahia, an artist led community center based in the Regla that uses culture as a tool for economic development, and Citykleta, a bicycling advocacy group started by activist Yasser Gonzalez, that promotes the use of bicycling in Havana.
Founded in 1997, MEDICC is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California that has worked to promote US-Cuba health collaboration and highlight Cuba’s public health contributions to global health equity and universal health. MEDICC facilitates mutual learning opportunities in several ways: its documentary film ¡Salud!; the open-access, MEDLINE-indexed English journal, MEDICC Review, that until 2023 published research by Cuban and other scholars from the Global South whose work addresses health equity;
insightful trips to Cuba for US health policymakers, educators and practitioners; Community Partnerships for Health Equity, a national network of US communities whose leaders have been inspired to innovate for better health, thanks to their MEDICC-organized experiences in Cuba; and by serving as an institutional bridge-builder between US, Cuban and global health institutions and organizations. MEDICC also assists US students and graduates of Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine to return home to practice in provider-shortage areas.