Our past and current partners in Kenya alongside our board members and staff recommended individuals and groups in Kenya and Tanzania to be a part of this pilot’s journey. We held an introductory meeting about the proposed approach with prospective Tanzanian collaborators in Arusha on the margins of the Community Based Adaptation Conference in May 2024. It was crucial for us to create grantmaking processes that fostered genuine collaboration and centred our partners’ expertise and experience to map systems, identify and prioritise points of leverage, and bring in other collaborators.
Collectively Conceptualizing the relationship between Loss, Damage, and Adaptation
Learning by doing: Testing New Models for Participation
Participatory grantmaking is a growing ethos in philanthropy, where funders cede power over funding decisions to the people affected by those decisions. It may include a wide range of practices, such as co-creation of strategy and priorities, diversification of grant committees and review panels, or even crowd-sourced decisions and voting by large groups.
Uniting Black and Indigenous Voices for Climate and Racial Justice
The Black Indigenous Liberation Movement (BILM) was formed in response to a dual crisis of racial and climate injustice that disproportionately affects Black and Indigenous communities across the Americas. Extractive industries—both legal and illegal—are rapidly depleting natural resources, polluting water sources, and displacing entire communities.
Cultivating Community for Climate Resilience
Latin America’s history is a history of migration—people moving between territories, from rural areas to cities, seeking opportunities. In Mexico City, this movement often leads to fragmentation, where individuals must fend for themselves, and neighbors remain strangers despite living side by side. This disconnect makes communities more vulnerable to climate change and food insecurity, as they lack support networks.
Telling Their Own Stories: Youth Voices for Climate Justice in Lake Chad
Lake Chad, which straddles the borders of Niger, Chad, Nigeria, and Cameroon, was once one of the largest lakes in the world, but it has been rapidly shrinking for decades. In fact, since the 1960s, it has lost over 90% of its mass, a reality that has caused large-scale population displacement, resource scarcity, and social tensions.
Keeping Water—and Communities—in Place
For generations, Somali farmers have relied on the Gu and Deyr rains, the two annual rainy seasons, to sustain their crops and livestock. But today, due to a changing climate, unpredictable droughts and devastating floods are threatening livelihoods, forcing many to abandon their land and migrate in search of security elsewhere.
“Water is so valuable that if a water catchment or borehole breaks, it inevitably means the community will have to leave their homes,” shares food insecurity expert Abdikadir Dooy, reflecting on the harsh realities many communities face.
Natural Curiosity: Connecting Indigenous Knowledge and Environmental Education
In a world where the past is often seen as distant from the present, cities are disconnected from nature, and Western society is contrasted with Indigenous ways of life, Natural Curiosity is shaping a new approach to environmental education.
True to its name, Natural Curiosity harnesses children’s innate curiosity and channels it toward understanding the deep connections between the natural world and Indigenous perspectives, namely their knowledge of land and water that comes from their ongoing relationship to the land. Natural Curiosity is transforming how educators integrate environmental and Indigenous education in the classroom, ensuring that learning is rooted not only in scientific principles, but also in cultural perspectives and lived experiences.