Weaving a Stronger Civil Society in the Global South

22 April 2025

• Ford Foundation

Civil society is made up of a wide variety of organizations that exist outside government: schools and universities, advocacy groups, nonprofits, churches, and cultural institutions. These groups hold government representatives accountable for their decisions and advocate for the rights and interests of their members. Civil society organizations can participate in essential conversations about how to protect their rights and create a more equitable society.

In 2022, the Ford Foundation launched Weaving Resilience, a five-year initiative that dedicated $80 million to support civil society organizations throughout the Global South. Today, eight regional hubs made up of over 30 organizations provide services in more than 20 countries, all dedicated to eliminating inequality and increasing capacity, sustainability, and overall well-being among those working in social justice. Recognizing the varied needs, strengths, and cultural contexts of those working in each region, the majority of service-providing organizations are from the Global South and have a deep understanding of the local landscapes and priorities of each region.

Now, as Weaving Resilience reaches its midpoint, its focus is on bringing services to more organizations and thinking about how their local solutions can be shared globally. This is particularly true for the hubs in Southern Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia: Each started with the same goals of creating institutional resilience, maintaining strategic relevance, and caring for the holistic well-being of those working to protect and expand civil society. Each has brought distinct strategies and solutions that reflect the cultures and needs of their regions. As they continue to explore these, they are sharing their lessons and perspectives with other regions and building the forward-thinking collaboration that defines Weaving Resilience. Meet these hubs below.

Southern Africa

Weaving Resilience was introduced while Ford’s Office for Southern Africa was already engaged in sustainable capacity building with its partners. Drawing inspiration from the foundation’s  BUILD initiative, which provides organizations with general operating and targeted organizational strengthening support, and leveraging the existing capacity-building framework at the office, Weaving Resilience provided an opportunity for bolder action. “We knew we had a lot of ground to cover—literally,” said Nicky Le Roux, senior program officer for the office. “The sheer geographical size and diversity of the region can be challenging.” 

The office aimed to extend its reach to organizations that play a crucial role in communities but were often overlooked. A survey conducted in the field revealed that many of these organizations had been adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and were grappling with similar challenges. As a result, there was a pressing need for strategic organizational and mental well-being support.

To meet their needs in a structured manner, the Southern Africa hub is designed as a collaborative committee that makes decisions collectively. It comprises five service providers, Ford representatives, and a coordinator. The chosen partners are locally based, possessing a deep understanding of the context and experience in delivering specialized services to organizations operating at the local level. The services include digital and cyber-security training from Digital Society Africa, mental health support and wellness from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, financial strengthening and resilience from Humentum, intensive guidance for civil society nonprofits seeking to enhance their organizational processes from SGS Consulting, and leadership coaching from Nabantu, which was added in the later stages.

Initially, the hub prioritized smaller, community-based organizations and social movements. Over time, it became clear that the hub’s services could assist organizations of all sizes, leading to an expansion of its scope to improve flexibility, meet demand, and increase impact. Its reach expanded from three to eight countries. “This expansive reach allowed the hub to address critical needs in areas such as gender equality, climate justice, health, and education, filling essential gaps, and fortifying the social justice sector in both broad and deep ways,” said Shaun Samuels, managing director of SGS. In-person support remains the primary form of engagement, as some organizations lack online access, while those that have access can receive services in a hybrid format. 

Introducing a trauma-informed approach to this work has proven critical, especially for leaders operating in survival mode. Le Roux observed that when the people working to protect and strengthen civil society are in danger of burning out—or lack the space and resources to heal from trauma while pursuing their group’s mission—it can destabilize and undermine their impact. CSVR found this to be true for some of the organizations it worked with. “The metaphor ‘a hungry stomach cannot hear’ comes to mind, as it illustrates how well-being needs often become secondary to financial and strategic development needs,” said CSVR mental health specialist Sumaiya Mohamed. 

One of the key takeaways was the need for trauma-aware leaders, as the hub found that the source of some challenges was misplaced. “Leaders are often caught off-guard trying to resolve ‘internal conflicts’ that they attribute to individual behaviors. Most of the time, these are often ‘fueled’ by a lack of awareness of the wounding from the work of being an activist,” said Mohamed.

Among the organizational challenges faced by the hub was that many small, community-level organizations lacked stable structures and operated largely through volunteer work with no paid staff. This can lead to unpredictable hours of operation and inconsistency in personnel. Le Roux said hub leaders are exploring long-term strategies to stabilize these situations. 

With less than two years left, the hub leaders are thinking about how to make their work sustainable. The need for civil society support remains high in a context where funding might be declining. “In these last two years of the hub, we are planning to have deeper conversations, not only with our partners but with other philanthropies, asking, ‘What does sustainability really look like?’” said Le Roux. The Southern Africa hub partners see many more opportunities to support social justice leaders in the region. “Five years is just not enough,” she added.. “We’ve only just scratched the surface.”

Indonesia

When establishing the Weaving Resilience hub in Indonesia, the Ford program team in Jakarta referenced its work with the foundation’s BUILD initiative. This research, and many conversations with grantees, directed hub leaders to focus on communications and financial resilience for civil society nonprofits. Program officers are also devoting some of their regional grantmaking funds to establish an endowment fund for civil society strengthening, a long-term strategy that will allow the hub’s work to continue beyond the Weaving Resilience initiative.

The hub works with organizations based throughout the country to provide services to civil society organizations. Re.Search provides the hub’s financial resilience services and REACH provides communications support.

“REACH’s focus on the power of storytelling has not only improved our ability to connect with our audience but has also increased visibility and social media engagement for our work,” Ahmad Rifai, executive director of Kota Kita, a nonprofit focused on urban planning and civic participation, told Ford about the assistance they’ve received from the hub. “These changes have had a transformative impact on how we approach our work and establish ourselves as a trusted partner in urban development initiatives.”

In addition to providing services for Indonesian organizations, the hub has facilitated networking and knowledge-sharing between civil society partners. Laili Khairnur, executive director of Gemawan, an organization that works with underrepresented communities in Borneo, said, “Gemawan has joined several activities conducted by the Indonesia hub’s service providers, which has increased our organization’s capacity and enhanced our services to the public and community. We have also connected to broader networks and potential partnerships in the near future.”

Rifai and Khairnur would like to see continued connection and collaboration of nonprofits facilitated by the hub, as well as expand program options to establish online databases with accessible examples of best practices, templates, and case studies for civil society organizations. “Fostering regional networks or peer learning hubs could promote collaboration and mutual support among organizations facing similar challenges,” Rifai said. 

“We believe that the stronger the organization, the stronger the movement,” Khairnur said. “Connection and collaboration within broader networking will help us to survive in the long term.”

It was with the future in mind that the Indonesia office created the Ananta Fund with $6 million from Ford’s social bond and other sources. This endowment will support the two arms of the hub beyond the initial five-year funding for Weaving Resilience, making it possible for more organizations in Indonesia to work on capacity building and institutional strengthening. “We want to develop not just the resource hub but also create an ecosystem of resiliencies,” said Alexander Irwan, regional director of Ford’s Indonesia office. “We would like what has been built to become a resource hub not just for Indonesia, but for the region of Southeast Asia.” 

While balancing support for civil society organizations with building resources for the future poses challenges, Indonesia’s hub has gone from working only with BUILD grantees, to BUILD grantees and Ford grantees beyond the BUILD initiative, to other organizations working to expand and protect civil society in the country. That expansion is proof not only that these hubs can be effective but that the learning process itself can inform what support for civil society organizations looks like in the future. “One of the good things that I’ve learned from Weaving Resilience is that the process is very important,” said Diah Dwiandani, special assistant and communications specialist. “We can’t just focus on, ‘Go from A, B, to C.’ It’s probably, ‘Go from A, B, D and then C, and then probably go straight to H.’ You may have to go back a few steps, but then you can leap ahead. That’s something we’ve learned together through the resource hub.”

Mexico and Central America

Ford’s Mexico and Central America office decided to focus on numerous areas of civil society work, since civic space has been shrinking in many countries in the region. This meant working with 11 other foundations in co-designing a regional collaborative funders initiative aimed at enhancing the resilience of the civil society organization ecosystem. The group of funders, together with a cohort of four service providers from the region, established ECOS, a hub focused on collective security and well-being, strategic planning and communications, and compliance and finance. The hub has supported groups working on human rights, feminism, transparency and anti-corruption, and environmental justice.

ECOS reached out to smaller and medium-sized groups, and groups in and outside of urban centers in Mexico and Central America, that might face more challenges to their day-to-day stability. Over a period of six months, the four service providers working in the hub determined how best to align and support organizations when their needs overlapped or they might benefit from coordinating with other groups. All service providers were from the region, recognizing a key mission of the hub. ”It was really important that the providers were from the Global South, because what usually happens is that a fiscal sponsor from the Global North receives the funds,” said Ximena Andion, deputy director of Ford’s Mexico and Central American office.

The hub’s services operate on three tiers, allowing flexibility of involvement for civil society groups: Universal programs, such as public webinars and video trainings, are open to all; targeted services, such as group-focused workshops on strategic communications, require applications; and individual services, such as technical trainings on legal compliance, are provided one-on-one. Initially, the only way to apply for hub services was through a dedicated website, but as the hub has grown, groups are also joining through foundation referrals and word-of-mouth. Geographic range is expanding, too: Most early hub applications were from groups in Mexico, but through collaboration with other foundation partners and the four hub providers, applications from Central America are increasing.

“Even though we still receive applications through our website, we are pointing more towards the collective and universal services which we have found to be more efficient,” said Paty de Obeso, director of Creatura, one of ECOS’ four service providers.

One challenge still facing the hub: how to reach more grassroots and Indigenous groups with smaller teams that might not have the time to participate in the hub’s programs as they are currently structured. Hub leaders are prioritizing organizational flexibility to meet these needs. “One of the things we’re trying to understand is what is happening when an organization dropped out in the middle of the process, and what we can do better to adapt and support them,” Andion said.

Going forward, the hub’s four service providers are already discussing how they could work together beyond the end of Weaving Resilience’s scope. Andion is encouraged and hopeful by what has already been built. “It seems like such a self-evidently great idea to continue to have a hub like this to support these civil society goals,” she said. “But without dedicated financial support, these organizations will have to go back to finding a way to be sustainable in a more separated way. It takes an enormous amount of effort to keep things woven together.”

Related Grantees

• Digital Society Africa
• Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation
• Humentum US
• SGS Consulting
• Nabantu
• Yayasan Kota Kita Surakarta
• Lembaga Gemawan
• Creatura, Critical Thinking Advocates

The post Weaving a Stronger Civil Society in the Global South appeared first on Ford Foundation.

Stories of Change: Inside The Moth and Ford’s Storytelling Training for Nonprofits

24 March 2025

• Victoria Dunning, Director, Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD)

At the Ford Foundation, we invest in individuals, ideas, and institutions—each with their own stories and strategies focused on ending inequality and creating a more just world. Our Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) program, in particular, believes in supporting long-term narratives of change, working with social justice organizations to become stronger and more resilient over time. And we believe in the power of narrative storytelling itself to amplify their organizations’ impact, fuel their advocacy and influence, engage stakeholders, and catalyze new funding opportunities. 

As a longtime member of the BUILD team and its current director, I witnessed the power of personal storytelling firsthand in June 2024, in the auditorium of the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice in New York. I watched as Mbongiseni Buthelezi—then the executive director of the Public Affairs Research Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa—took his place alone on the stage, under a bright spotlight. And I held my breath, along with his rapt audience, as he told his story.

“April 27, 1994: The first democratic elections were held in South Africa. My parents woke up early to go and vote. They could vote for the first time, after 300 years of colonialism and apartheid,” he said. “They voted for a better life for us, their children. They wanted us to have the education that they never had.”

This evening—a storytelling performance of five social justice leaders sharing their personal journeys of leadership and purpose—was the culmination of a series of workshops that Buthelezi took with The Moth, a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the art of storytelling and celebrating the commonality of the human experience. The initiative, held in partnership with BUILD, focused on training leaders from nonprofits and civil society how to harness the power of their own personal narratives in order to create clearer messaging, stronger fundraising, and greater impact.

Ford’s BUILD program invests holistically in our grantee nonprofits and civil society organizations by providing general operating support, combined with organizational strengthening support. Through our partnership with The Moth, we added a tool to the toolbox of our grantee partner leaders: the power of true personal storytelling.  

When nonprofit leaders have the skills to communicate their missions and purpose quickly and clearly, they can engage audiences, shift mindsets, and connect with funders and stakeholders in new and compelling ways. When people share their humanity, listeners connect with it deeply and memorably. This storytelling can complement all the other metrics nonprofits use to communicate their work—reports, numbers served, theories of change, log frames—and communicate their human impact and nuances. We also believe that, as with so many other facets of leadership, narrative storytelling is a skillset that can be studied and honed—and that for nonprofit leaders who have spent their lives elevating others, working outside the spotlight, the benefits can be tremendous.

For Buthelezi, The Moth’s training meant sharing insights about his personal challenges and setbacks in his social justice career, which he had not shared readily with audiences before. As he learned, sharing these details can help listeners find new ways to connect with the complex issues and sectors he works in.

“It’s about the deeper you can reach into your experiences, the more you can talk about the little things that happened along your journey,” said Buthelezi. “The conversation you have with your kid or your partner when you get home, the frustrations you feel while trying to make an organization run or the world a better place: Those are the things that become really relatable for other people.”

Buthelezi, who now serves as CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, also attended The Moth and Ford’s second storytelling Mainstage in Johannesburg. As with the New York City event, the South Africa event performers took The Moth and Ford’s training before telling their stories to an audience of funders, civil society leaders, and media.

Since its founding in New York in 1997, The Moth has hosted storytelling slams in 28 cities and expanded to several books and a popular podcast. Throughout the years, it has presented personal stories from acclaimed writers such as Malcolm Gladwell and Elizabeth Gilbert, but most of the people on Moth stages have been everyday people with extraordinary and surprising stories to tell. In addition to its 600 worldwide events each year, The Moth has also produced storytelling workshops and curated storytelling events that addressed gender rights and food justice, setting the rubric for our collaboration to explore the long, non-linear journeys of nonprofit organizations and leaders.

The Moth and Ford’s initiative encouraged social justice leaders to focus their stories on turning points in their lives—a challenge encountered, an opportunity presented—and distill their experiences into 10-minute personal stories, told from memory onstage with no scripts or notes. Workshops were held over three days in April 2024 in New York City and Johannesburg; during them, Moth instructors taught participants key principles of narrative storytelling, strategies for honing on their most compelling themes, and ways their personal narratives can be adapted to enact change in their communities. The instructors also guided them through how to distill their stories into 60- and 90-second versions to share in funder conversations, boardrooms, staff meetings, and other opportunities.

Sarah Austin Jenness, The Moth’s executive producer and co-director of The Moth and Ford’s initiative, said all the stories told by its participants—and on all of The Moth’s stages—unfold from a single inflection point in the storyteller’s life.

“These stories are always about a decision that you made and something that was at stake for you,” said Jenness. “When you’re using your personal stories in your work, it helps people listening feel like these larger critical world issues are in their own backyard as well. These stories have universal human emotions, and you can’t look away.”

Bianca Agustin, co-director of United for Respect, a workers’ rights nonprofit, was another participant in The Moth and Ford’s initiative and the New York storytelling Moth Mainstage event. After rehearsing her story around 100 times, by her estimation, she told a story about a setback in a collective bargaining campaign she’d worked on for five years and how she came to a crossroads about continuing her life’s work. She said the training helped her appreciate the value of sharing her personal vulnerability amid discussion of widespread, structural challenges.

“I think often, when you talk about hot-button issues like police brutality or racism, it’s easy for people to discount it—because if they haven’t experienced it, it doesn’t seem real,” said Agustin. “But when you’re confronted with someone’s clear, personal stories of an experience, you can’t discount that.”

At The Moth’s storytelling event in Johannesburg, at The Lesedi at Joburg Theatre, Nomzamo Zondo, executive director of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI), told a story about entering social justice after working in law. She said the experience taught her that it is essential to infuse personal perspective into nonprofit work because so much of social justice change depends on furthering narratives that foreground clear, compelling solutions to big problems.

“It’s about influencing how people see the world. It’s about making sure, even for nonprofit leaders, that people see the logic behind the work that we do, and also that they understand how it connects with their lives,” she said.

During The Moth’s training, Zondo found it freeing to let her personality shine through in her storytelling, and said it made her reconsider boundaries she’d previously set in her life.

“I now understand that Nomzamo the lawyer, Nomzamo the executive director, Nomzamo the leader at SERI are all a product of Nomzamo the individual,” she said. “It is important to see how other people are formed by their personal backgrounds. Realizing this also allows me to show up genuinely and openly, without feeling the pressure to always act like a professional. The professional is a product of the personal.” 

The Moth and Ford’s partnership emphasized increasing narrative opportunities for organizational leaders in the United States and the Global South, in our conviction that social justice storytelling can clarify big challenges by humanizing the people behind the progress, showing the day-to-day struggles and complexities that often go unrecognized in their work and illuminating the large and small impacts of their advocacy. They can give emotional urgency to the people who have been historically underrepresented—and within that attention is power. These leaders and their organizations do more than what can ever be explained in PowerPoint presentations or written reports. 

In the BUILD initiative, we ask our grantees for the stories they want to tell: “Where do you want to go over the next five years? What’s your journey going to be? What kind of organization do you want to become, and what kind of investments will bring you there?” And as we work to help them fulfill this, we see how many opportunities exist for social justice leaders to share why their work matters to them and others, how they rise from setbacks and adversity and keep pushing forward every day. There are infinite stories to tell as we work together to create a more just world.

Related Grantees

• Public Affairs Research Institute
• The Moth
• United for Respect Education Fund
• The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa

The post Stories of Change: Inside The Moth and Ford’s Storytelling Training for Nonprofits appeared first on Ford Foundation.

How Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Are Shaping the Future of Climate Funding

5 February 2025

• Ford Foundation

Around the world, Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IP and LCs) have gained significant recognition of their land rights. They legally own about 11% of the world’s land, after decades of sustained mobilization, research, and advocacy by communities and their allies. 

While enforcement of these legal gains remains inconsistent across nations, climate scientists, funders, and world leaders have increasingly recognized that when IP and LCs have strong tenure rights, they are able to continue traditional practices that have proven invaluable in addressing climate change. With secure rights to manage their lands, IP and LCs are often able to protect forests that are both crucial carbon sinks and vital sources of their livelihoods and cultural identities. For example, some communities reduce wildfires by practicing traditional burns or helping halt illegal activities on their lands—including logging, mining, and land-grabbing—that lead to widespread deforestation.

Today, more than a third of the world’s intact forests are located on Indigenous Peoples’ land. But despite the outsize role these communities play in conservation, a 2021 report revealed that less than 1% of global climate funding reaches IP and LCs directly. To help address this gap in funding, the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands partnered with 17 funders, including Ford, to commit $1.7 billion for IP and LC tenure rights and forest guardianship. 

IP and LC organizations have also started to change the funding landscape from the bottom up: In the past several years, a number of them have launched their own ambitious funds and grantmaking programs, harnessing their local expertise to channel financial resources directly to communities. 

These funds are redefining how frontline IP and LC communities are supported—not just in the critical work they do to strengthen collective tenure rights and protect forests, but also in advancing gender equity, food security, and economic opportunities in their communities. Though they vary in size, duration, and scope, their work demonstrates that securing collective land rights is essential to social justice, environmental sustainability, economic equality, and long-term community development.

Too often, climate change and biodiversity priorities are defined by global and national interests and their processes do not include land-connected communities. In contrast, these funds provide new opportunities for funders to invest directly in IP and LC organizations, shift power imbalances that have been historically embedded in philanthropy and international cooperation programs, and set a new model for how communities and funders can work together toward their shared goals.

From Latin America to Asia and Africa, IP and LC-led funds look and operate differently across cultural contexts, yet they share overarching goals: to strengthen community rights to land and natural resources and to enhance self-determined development in their territories. Doing so helps combat climate change and conserve biodiversity.

Despite being spread across the world, these community-led funds are not working in isolation. Many are connected through Shandia, a platform created by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities to support the creation, development, and sustainability of continental, national, and regional IP and LC-led funds. This platform provides space for newer funds to learn from more established ones and for community leaders to share knowledge and connect around common causes. It provides a platform for collective advocacy on the issue of direct funding and helps IP and LCs around the globe connect with funders and speak with them in a unified voice.

Now, learn more about four IP and LC-led funds that are leading the way for a greener, more equitable future.

Indigenous Peoples of Asia Solidarity Fund (IPAS)

Working across 13 countries in Asia, the Indigenous Peoples of Asia Solidarity Fund (IPAS) is among the newest IP and LC-led funds. Launched in 2023, it is currently disbursing its first round of grants and establishing national steering committees to structure their work across the continent—no small task, considering Asia is home to over 300 million Indigenous Peoples, making up two-thirds of the world’s Indigenous population.

“Although we operate in different countries, we are actually connected, not racing against each other,” said Jenifer Lasimbang, executive director of IPAS. “We want to work in the spirit of cooperation rather than competition.”

IPAS aims to build solidarity and cooperation among Asia’s Indigenous Peoples, strengthen community organizations and institutions, and secure direct access to funding. “Communities cannot be burdened by looking for funds as well as protecting our ecosystems,” said Lasimbang.  

As IPAS delivers its first round of grants, Lasimbang said the fund is focused on being as inclusive as possible—getting opinions from women, youth organizers, and people with disabilities, among others—as well as surveying the needs and capacities of organizations in the countries where IPAS plans to make grants. Country steering committees will direct funding in a way that gives Indigenous-led organizations more decision-making power over the projects that come from their locally informed solutions. With this, they aim to add to current momentum: A progress report on the five-year, $1.7 billion pledge found that direct funding to IP and LC organizations increased to 10.6% in 2023, a significant jump from 2.1% in 2022, but urgent work is needed to ensure more resources reach communities directly.

Lasimbang said the best way to sustain IP and LCs’ shared work and solidarity across nations and regions is to make space for different lived experiences, processes, and perspectives. 

“I mentioned during our first board meeting that I want to try and visualize where funds are flowing by lighting up the areas and communities receiving them,” she said.  “We want to see the whole of Asia lit up, with no dark areas. Everybody has some form of light.”

Mesoamerican Territorial Fund

The Mesoamerican Territorial Fund supports IP and LC-led conservation, environmental, economic, local governance, and social justice and rights work in Mexico and Central America. Launched by the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests in 2021, the fund has expanded in the last four years from supporting 10 organizations to 22 across the six countries that comprise the Mesoamerican region. 

The Mesoamerican Territorial Fund also connects communities across the region and offers opportunities for IP and LC organizations to learn how to engage with philanthropy and investors. As they work to unite different practices, though, organizers stress that each of its grantees function within their own cultural and geographic contexts. They say successful IP and LC-led funding must reflect the many different ways these organizations operate and recognize how these groups’ conservation work can overlap with other social justice issues, including economic justice and gender equality.

“Respecting the knowledge that communities have about conserving and managing their territories and natural resources requires respecting everything about their culture and traditional knowledge, not just assuming that they can squeeze themselves into a little box in a [grant] application,” said María Pía Hernandez, manager of the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund. “There is a degree of flexibility and cultural adaptation that is required to work within those communities.”

“What is needed on the ground is to invest in the forest and, importantly, in the people that live there and take care of it. It is in the interest of humanity to keep working directly with communities, directly with Indigenous Peoples.”

María Pía Hernandez, manager of the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund

The  Community Forestry Association of Guatemala Utz Che’, an IP and LC-led national network that supports farming communities, sustainable agriculture practices, and the sustainable management of their natural resources—primarily forests, forest plantations, and water sources—in Guatemala, saw immediate benefits from their Mesoamerican Territorial Fund grant. With its $60,000 funding from the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund, Utz Che’ was able to further their reforestation and sustainable agriculture work and support Indigenous entrepreneurs in their region. Cooperativa Agrícola Integral Unión Huista R.L., an agricultural cooperative in southern Guatemala that is part of Utz Che’s network, used some of its funding to build a biofactory, which allows its members to grow coffee using fewer toxic chemicals, contribute to soil regeneration and environmental restoration, and employ members of their community. 

Cecilia Montejo, a member of Cooperativa Agrícola Integral Unión Huista R.L., said their grant from the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund has allowed the organization to concentrate their efforts where they are most valuable. “We’re not looking for a profit here. What we do want is to help our members,” she said. “In Utz Che’, we really care for our community and the development of all our members.”

Mesoamerican Territorial Fund’s grantmaking extends to a wide spectrum of community-based entrepreneurial and economic activities that create opportunities for IP and LC communities to thrive. It recently provided seed capital to a women-run restaurant on the coast of Guatemala, allowing the owners to provide for their families, as well as helped fund efforts to ensure tenure rights over forest land for Indigenous Peoples in the northern part of the country. The fund has also supported women and young people who started small businesses that sustainably export regional staples such as cocoa. 

“What is needed on the ground is to invest in the forest and, importantly, in the people that live there and take care of it,” says Hernandez. “It is in the interest of humanity to keep working directly with communities, directly with Indigenous Peoples.”

Network of Community Funds From the Brazilian Amazon

The Network of Community Funds From the Brazilian Amazon aligns nine territorial funds that support Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities. Established in 2023 at the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum in Belém of Pará, Brazil, a conference dedicated to the Amazon region and the many peoples who live in it, the Network is building solidarity among community funds in the Brazilian Amazon.

To help community-led funds achieve their shared conservation and tenure rights goals, the network offers a space of collective learning and reflection about fundraising. They discuss ways to improve their leverage with the donor community and promote true solidarity and partnership as essential philanthropic values, while developing strategies to offer rapid-response support to communities during moments of environmental crisis like floods or wildfires. 

Its members include Podáali, the first Indigenous-led fund to serve the country’s entire Amazonian region. Podáali’s mission is to strengthen Indigenous communities’ rights, autonomy, and territorial and environmental management in the Brazilian Amazon, with an emphasis on redistributing resources to them. Another member is Mizizi Dudu, the first Quilombola-led fund based in the state of Pará, which supports Quilombola communities’ land rights, economic participation, and capacity-building efforts. The Interstate Movement of Babassu Coconut Breakers (MIQCB) is a women-led fund that promotes economic opportunities for babassu coconut breakers and protections for their collective territories.

As a whole, the network supports the collective advocacy of its members, encouraging the donor community to improve its grantmaking by responding to realities on the ground and adapting to the communities’ terms. 

“The network is here to strengthen our voices as the Amazon,” said Claudia Soares Baré, secretary director of Podáali. “Many territories don’t have access to telephones or the internet. We are not going to force communities to have complex bureaucracies.”

“As a network, we don’t want to just discuss funding. We want to be protagonists. We want to have collective power and self-determination.”

Graça Costa, president of the Dema Fund

The Dema Fund, another member of the Network of Community Funds, supports Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities, especially women-led groups, as well as small agricultural producers working on sustainable development, environmental conservation efforts, and economic growth. It was created in 2004 through a settlement with the Brazilian government over illegal logging on Indigenous land. Since then, it has developed innovative ways to ensure accountability while remaining friendly and respectful to communities’ processes. 

Graça Costa, president of the Dema Fund, said their work supports emerging leaders within their own communities. “We want to make sure these organizations are leaders of their own processes so they can advocate for issues such as climate change,” said Costa. “We cannot give up who we are as we defend our territories, develop economic and educational initiatives, and create opportunities for women and young people. We want to find our common ground so we can be a strong voice in the global conversation.”

Costa noted that support for IP and LC-led funds must be long-term, renewable, and sustainable, just like the solutions they enable. “We don’t want these funds to become just a trend,” Costa said. “As a network, we don’t want to just discuss funding. We want to be protagonists. We want to have collective power and self-determination.”

Nusantara Fund

The Nusantara Fund is a joint initiative launched in Indonesia between the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA), and Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI). These national organizations represent three distinct yet connected movements in the country: the Indigenous Peoples movement, the agrarian reform movement, and the environmentalist movement. Together, their work aims to directly support at least 30 million people and protect 30 million hectares of land. They are currently working to establish an endowment of at least $100 million that would ensure a baseline of support for IP and LCs across Indonesia for the next decade.

Since launching in 2023, Nusantara has already catalyzed progress for over three million people. Its grants have enabled communities at the grassroots level, such as farmers, fisherfolks, women, and youth to create more sustainable and accessible practices, developed trainings and projects that help community members understand their rights, and established schools dedicated to preserving and passing on traditional knowledge to future generations. Thanks to Nusantara’s direct funding, nearly 300,000 hectares of IP and LC lands have been successfully mapped, and a portion of them has already been proposed for collective ownership and community management recognition. Nusantara also helped fund the creation of IPAS.

Nusantara was the first direct funding mechanism for IP and LCs in Indonesia, and it sought collaboration early. When Nusantara launched in May 2023, it hosted a global exchange with the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund, Podáali, IPAS, and other funds to build solidarity, share knowledge, and discuss collaborative plans across borders for IP and LC funds.

“Indigenous Peoples and local communities can be directly supported. I think that support will help make real progress in conservation and climate justice, and it is more effective than the current system. This will save lives and protect important cultural knowledge for future generations,” said Ode Rakhman, executive director of Nusantara Fund. “Many donors share this vision. They want to save the earth; they want to realize climate justice. We need to support local and Indigenous communities as they do this work.”

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Cecile Richards, Champion for Justice, Forever Undaunted

20 January 2025

• Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

Cecile Richards was a giant of our time and all time—a righteous troublemaker for good and for justice.

I knew her as many things—a revered leader and audacious activist, a respected member of the Ford Foundation’s Board of Trustees and beloved friend—but I first met her when I was a young man involved in Texas student politics and she a young organizer for workers’ rights and affordable housing, the image of her iconic mother, the inimitable Ann Richards. 

From that initial introduction, nearly a half century ago, I saw instantly what remained indelible for 67 years: Cecile’s brilliance, her kindness, her courage—the radical hope that inspired her life’s work.  She was her mother’s daughter—proudly so—and a beacon for fairness and freedom in her own right.

As President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Cecile stared down many of the most insidious forces in American life—and never blinked. She challenged us all to recognize the urgency and significance of women’s reproductive equality when the stakes were greatest.  Indeed, the stakes were the point.   

As a Ford Foundation trustee between 2010 and 2022, she lent her sagacity, savvy, and strength—her grace and gumption—to serving our mission and maximizing our impact in the world: To protecting democratic values and institutions, human dignity and rights, during an era when they faced unprecedented assault.

And even as Cecile endured personal hardship, she never faltered. This past year, while bravely battling glioblastoma, she continued her frontlines fight for voting rights and voter participation—and she brought to broad audiences the stories of women whose lives were upended by abortion bans, firm in her conviction that personal stories could foster empathy and drive change.  Only a few weeks ago, she accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor, for her lifetime of service to the idea of America—for her lifelong effort to fulfill America’s promise for all.

Today, as we grieve for Cecile, my heart is heavy and my thoughts are with her beloved husband Kirk; her three extraordinary children, Daniel, Hannah, and Lily; her grandson, Lily’s Teddy.

When they shared news of her passing, they invoked a question that she posed often on behalf of Teddy’s generation and all the generations to follow: “When there was so much at stake for our country, what did you do?”  Let us resolve to answer as Cecile did, forever undaunted, emboldened with love and hope: “Everything we can.”

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The Humble Giant from Plains

29 December 2024

• Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

President James Earl Carter Jr. was 90-years young when he last visited us at the Ford Foundation in January, 2015. I vividly remember the twinkle in his eye, the bounce in his step, as he nearly skipped through our doors and bounded into the building. 

Here was the man from Plains, the epitome of decency and humility, kindness and grace. Here was, as he would later say of himself, the farmer, naval officer, teacher, activist, builder, governor, and Nobel laureate, who, from 1977 to 1981, served with distinction as the 39th President of the United States.

As a young man, I admired President Carter—among the most honorable leaders in our nation’s history—and I was later privileged to know him personally through his work with the Carter Center, a decades-long partner of the Ford Foundation. In all of his work, the president elevated those around him. Yet, he also grounded us in the timeless set of values he so fully embodied: humanity, dignity, justice.

President Carter loved America—and he loved all Americans. From Plains, Georgia to Pennsylvania Avenue and beyond, President Carter fought injustice and waged peace with fierce conviction. He drove social justice on a scale both grand and intimate: championing civil rights in the deep South and building new homes with Habitat for Humanity, expanding educational opportunity across the country and teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church.

Of course, this American patriot was also a great global citizen because his belief in the power of democracy to bring dignity to people all around the world never wavered. That conviction propelled him to the busy streets of Monrovia and Lagos, where he served as an election monitor, and to Camp David, where he brokered a historic treaty between Israel and Egypt. His lifelong commitment to progress was equalled in his late wife of 77 years, First Lady Rosalynn Carter; she was a trusted voice in his administration and a steadfast advocate for women’s rights, mental health care, and much more. 

A man of deep and abiding faith, he was, in the truest sense, a servant leader. As we honor President Carter’s life and legacy, let us heed his call to recognize—with humility, with devotion, with reverence—the enduring bond of our common humanity.

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Fighting for a Just Economy: Workers Lead the Way

9 December 2024

• Ford Foundation

For generations, the United States of America has been built on a pact: secure a job, commit to it, and ensure a stable life. Yet for millions of workers, this promise is dissolving.

Across every sector, jobs are becoming increasingly precarious. Gig work, temporary positions, and subcontracted roles are replacing traditional employment, leaving workers with unpredictable incomes, erratic schedules, and a lack of benefits. This instability breeds anxiety, disrupts families, and creates a sense of expendability, ultimately destabilizing entire communities and creating a race to the bottom economy.

This rise of precarious work is no accident. Decades of policies prioritizing corporate profits over worker protections have eroded job security and weakened worker power. By design, this uncertainty leaves workers vulnerable and less likely to demand their rights, individually and collectively.

But a new wave of worker activism is rising to meet this challenge. Nationwide, workers are organizing across industries and state lines; forming unions, building power in new coalitions, and pushing for bold reforms that protect workers and not just corporate interests. Above all, they’re proving that in this economy, isolation is the enemy and collective power is the solution.

Among those leading the fight for a more just economy are Ford’s grantee partners. Their stories are diverse: an app delivery driver organizing for fair wages and protections, a fashion model combating exploitative practices, a warehouse worker demanding safe conditions, and a solar industry temp worker advocating for a sustainable planet and employment. Their experiences are just a sample of what workplaces look like across the country, and the kind of innovative advocacy that is being undertaken nationwide. These individuals, and the organizations they advocate alongside, are challenging precarious work and sharing their hard-won progress towards a future where all workers have a voice and a chance to thrive. Here are some of their stories.

App-Based Delivery Drivers and the Road to Justice

The Worker’s Justice Project

As a driver for food delivery apps, William Medina navigates the treacherous landscape of New York City every day. Since moving from Colombia with his family six years ago, he has worked for several of these companies, facing harsh weather, dangerous streets, and significant threats of violence and theft.

“I’ve worked in -25 degree weather, which is almost unbearable to spend over four hours in. In the heat, we suffer a lot of burns, skin irritation, and dehydration,” he said. “I’ve had lots of accidents on the bikes I had. Once, my motorcycle was stolen at gunpoint. It took me a long time to save that money and in five minutes, I lost it all.”

Medina’s experience is a stark reminder of the challenges faced by thousands of delivery workers, or “deliveristas,” who power the city’s booming food delivery industry. Classified as independent contractors, they lack basic worker rights and are at the mercy of opaque algorithms that control their pay, hours, and even access to tips, leading to unrelenting pressure to perform deliveries without regard to safety conditions. As a result, app delivery work is now the most lethal occupation in New York City, and according to research one of the most dangerous overall.

But Medina does not only deliver food—he’s delivering change to his industry. As a labor organizer with the Worker’s Justice Project (WJP), he’s part of a movement uniting delivery workers across ethnic and cultural backgrounds to demand better working conditions.

WJP is a worker center, which is a nonprofit that aims to organize and train workers who are not yet members of traditional unions and usually focuses on supporting low-wage workers. WJP organizes workers and fights to raise workplace protections and wages in the app-based delivery, construction, and house-cleaning industries. The group is active in supporting workers who have been on the frontlines after citywide disasters, including Hurricane Sandy and COVID-19—crises that affected all New Yorkers, yet left independent and gig workers particularly vulnerable.

The movement gained momentum in 2020 with the formation of Worker’s Justice Project’s Los Deliveristas Unidos organizing campaign, which is led primarily by Indigenous Guatemalan and Mexican workers. They organized to address critical needs for workers including street safety, access to bathrooms, and pay transparency. “Our power is in our unity,” emphasized Medina, who actively connects with deliveristas from diverse cultural backgrounds who experience similar struggles. This resulted in building community and solidarity with workers from West Africa, South Asia and particularly Bangladesh, who shared similar concerns.

“We don’t want a robot to rate us. We don’t want the algorithm to retaliate against workers. There needs to be a balancing point.”

William Medina

WJP combines direct support, like providing bike repair services, with broader advocacy for systemic change. Their research and reports, including “Essential, but Unprotected,” have been instrumental in raising awareness about the challenges faced by delivery workers and fostering collaboration among diverse groups.

Their strategy for short- and long-term change is working. In a landmark win, WJP helped secure a minimum wage increase for app-based delivery workers in New York City, raising their pay to $19.56 per hour before tips, up from just $5.39 before.

“We are making sure workers who are usually invisibilized are finally heard, seen, recognized, and respected,” said Ligia Guallpa, executive director and cofounder of Worker’s Justice Project. 

Beyond fair wages, WJP advocates for greater transparency in payment systems and helps workers resolve disputes with app companies, including around unpaid wages or unfair deactivations of their gig platform accounts.

They have also successfully pushed for the creation of “Deliveristas Hubs” — safe spaces for workers to rest, organize with other workers, and recharge their bikes — and partnered with city officials to improve bike lane infrastructure and traffic safety measures. The first hub will open in 2025 at City Hall Park in Downtown Manhattan, an area with one of the highest uses of app delivery in the city.  

While delivery apps and their algorithms are here to stay, Medina stresses the need for balance. Workers deserve fair treatment, not just automated management. “We don’t want a robot to rate us,” he says, advocating for a system that values human dignity alongside efficiency.

“We don’t want the algorithm to retaliate against workers,” he said. “There needs to be a balancing point.”

Runways to Collective Action –  Fashion Workers Demand Dignity

The Model Alliance

Esmeralda Seay-Reynolds began modeling for some of the top fashion designers and labels in the world at age 15, a lifestyle she called “a Cinderella fantasy”—except for the abuse and exploitation she regularly faced behind the scenes.

“Modeling means you have these blips of extreme situations—whether they’re really incredible, like you’re the face on a magazine, or really awful, and you’re being physically abused by a photographer or psychologically abused by your agent, or you’ve been financially stolen from,” said Seay-Reynolds. “It’s supposed to be the best thing that could ever happen to you, and it feels terrible.”

Seay-Reynolds is a member of the worker council for the Model Alliance, a New York nonprofit that advances labor rights in the fashion industry. Founded in 2012 by labor activist and former model Sara Ziff, the organization has achieved significant milestones, from establishing child labor protections in the modeling industry to creating the first and only fashion worker support line. Notably, they also played a crucial role in the passage of the 2022 the Adult Survivors Act, enabling survivors of sexual assault to file lawsuits beyond the statute of limitations and resulting in over 3,000 suits filed.

“It’s supposed to be the best thing that could ever happen to you, and it feels terrible.”

Esmeralda Seay-Reynolds

Ziff and Seay-Reynolds’ work often highlights the systemic power imbalance in the trillion-dollar global fashion industry, with often young models facing regular exploitation from older agents and photographers. This is exacerbated by the lack of regulation for modeling agencies, which hold significant control over models’ careers and finances. Seay-Reynolds recounts instances where this lack of oversight led to dangerous situations for her, including being sent to a known sexual predator’s apartment on a “go-see” and being pressured into a risky photo shoot in Iceland where the photographer demanded she crawl into caves and jump over ravines, all in skimpy garments.

“Since its inception, the industry has been a backwater for workers’ rights, rife with various abuses that are basically considered the price of admission. Yet the perception of glamor contributes to a distinct lack of sympathy for models, as if what we do is not real work,” said Ziff, who made a documentary about her modeling career, Picture Me, in 2009. “I think this is the case for many jobs that are devalued because of their association with femininity. So we have a lot of structural sexism to overcome.”

Financial precarity is another issue, given models are typically contractually designated as independent contractors represented by modeling agencies; these unlicensed, unregulated companies exert enormous control over the teenage girls in their employ, from asking them to sign exclusive, multi-year, auto-renewing contracts to holding power of attorney over them. This allows the agency to book the models’ jobs, negotiate their rates, control their payments, give third parties permission to use their image, and deduct expenses without explanation (Seay-Reynolds was once paid only $130 for six weeks of high-profile work). Models are largely unprotected outside of the terms of their individual contracts, which tend to be stacked heavily to the advantage of the modeling agencies, and results in a wholesale lack of transparency, accountability, and autonomy.

To combat these problems, the Model Alliance is demanding protections for fashion workers, including zero-tolerance policies for abuse, autonomy to decline jobs, increased transparency and accountability within agencies, and establishment of a fiduciary duty for agencies to act in their talents’ best interests. With the accelerating use of technology across society, the Model Alliance is also calling for protections against the misuse of AI by requiring that agencies and brands get clear, written consent for the use of a model’s digital replica.

Ziff emphasizes the importance of labor solidarity across the fashion industry. “Across the board, whether you’re walking down a runway in New York or you’re in a factory in Bangladesh, this is an industry that is built largely on the backs of young women and girls who are trying to have a voice in their work.”

Boxed Out No Longer: Warehouse Workers Demand Safe Working Conditions

For the Many

America’s ecommerce market is booming, projected to surpass $1.3 trillion in sales in 2024. This surge in online shopping, where a world of products are instantly accessible by computers and smartphones, has reshaped the retail landscape. However, this convenience often masks a harsh reality for the people who make it possible: warehouse workers. The enormous scale of online retail, driven by the need for rapid order fulfillment and ever-faster delivery times, puts immense pressure on millions of warehouse workers, particularly those employed by giants like Amazon, Walmart and Target, among others. These workers represent the hidden human cost of the ecommerce revolution.

These companies are known for having hundreds of millions of customers, but there are other numbers that don’t get as much publicity. Some of these companies have an alleged annual employee turnover rate of 150% and nearly 50% of warehouse workers are injured during peak sales rushes.

The business processes of e-commerce giants “try to turn people into robots and maximize their work efficiency—and if people can’t keep up, they’ll be replaced,” said Jonathan Bix, executive director and cofounder of For the Many, an upstate New York nonprofit that organizes workers and advocates for labor-friendly legislation. “You see the difficulties of that in these companies’ very, very high turnover rates.”

In recent years, America’s warehouse workers have reported numerous harrowing labor conditions, including increased surveillance and excessive productivity requirements that can make even going to the restroom challenging. In response, workers are increasingly organizing and collectivizing, whether in unions or workers councils.

Keith Williams, a warehouse worker and labor organizer in New York, said the push to make this type of work safe and sustainable has been met with resistance from management, but solidarity is growing steadily among his colleagues.

“Change is wanted and needed,” he said. “We see the wins and we see the progress, and that’s what keeps us going. We are letting these companies know that we’re not going to go away.”

One of Williams’ chief motivations is the lack of safety measures, with management often disregarding injuries as annoyances. He says these companies see you as “a better employee if you can push past being tired and hurt to get back out there.”

Williams has suffered two injuries on the job, including having a desk fall onto his neck in a dark equipment trailer, which he asserts would have been avoidable with proper safety precautions in place. He said management discouraged him from pursuing worker’s comp, but he did so regardless, and has experienced numerous complications in receiving it. In the interim, he has also suffered hand and nerve damage related to his injury.

“We see the wins and we see the progress, and that’s what keeps us going. We are letting these companies know that we’re not going to go away.”

Keith Williams

Bix contends that the size of major warehouse and ecommerce companies stacks the deck against workers, noting that ecommerce companies must be held accountable to their legal obligation to participate in collective bargaining. He also noted that antitrust rules remain outdated. “We must update our anti-monopoly laws to be able to keep up with these new corporations that are basically entire nation-states and the size of entire economies by themselves,” he said. “These kinds of companies are not going to self-regulate.”

Williams can see, meanwhile, that worker power is gaining traction among his warehouse colleagues. They have already improved conditions by learning about their rights, securing time off to vote, negotiating for employees to bring a witness when they meet with management, and ensuring that essential training and safety information is posted in Spanish for its majority Latino workforce.

“We are letting people know that they actually have rights, that they’re still human once they’re walking into that building,” said Williams. “Knowing my rights has made my job more secure, because management knows that I know my rights.”

Fixing the Dark Side of the Solar Industry

The Green Workers Alliance

The sustainability of our planet depends on transitioning to clean energy sources, especially solar power. But how sustainable are working conditions for the people building this crucial technology?

Not very, said DaShawn Beaulieu, an electrical quality control representative for a solar energy corporation and an activist with the Green Workers Alliance, a nonprofit that supports workers in the clean energy field. He works at solar construction sites—and said it’s brutal, physical work where safety can quickly fall by the wayside.

“There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity within solar, but it’s very rough work and there’s always a threat of imminent danger. It’s a free-for-all with no protection; if someone gets injured at work, there’s nobody to call,” said Beaulieu. “To eliminate a bunch of that liability, the companies always go through a temp agency.”

Temp agencies are the backbone of the rapidly growing solar industry, and many other industries, too. They hire workers on individual projects with no assurance of future work, and use their intermediary role to deprive workers of the proper safety training and reasonable hours they might get from direct employment. Temp-hired workers’ wages are often more opaque, with a cut of them going directly to the agency. Despite these subpar conditions, temp workers often find limited options beyond them: This employment model disproportionately impacts immigrants, formerly incarcerated individuals, and people with disabilities.

“A lot of these people fear retaliation, and they’re not educated in regards to the legal aspect. But managers can’t fire you for complaining.”

DaShawn Beaulieu

What’s worse, exploiting workers undermines the entire global transition to green energy, because “you can’t do it on the backs of bad jobs,” says Matthew Mayers, executive director of the Green Workers Alliance. “It’s the wrong thing to do and, also, people won’t take the jobs.”

The Green Workers Alliance organizes solar and wind workers and advocates for policies that simultaneously fight climate change and increase the number of jobs with fair labor conditions. The group often collaborates with unions and connects workers to outside lawyers and labor experts if they have experienced wage theft or feel they’ve been unjustly terminated, have experienced sexual harassment, or are uncertain about claiming worker’s comp for an injury. “Sometimes folks will be scared or wary of applying for workers’ comp because they’re like, ‘I don’t want to not get hired again on a project,’” said Mayers.

Sheila Maddali, executive director of Grassroots Law & Organizing for Workers (GLOW), a racial and economic justice organization, argues that the temp work model, a $146 billion industry, allows companies to exploit workers by creating a power imbalance. This “fissuring” of the employer-worker relationship lets companies avoid accountability for issues like wage theft and discrimination, as they can simply deflect blame to the temp agency. GLOW believes a widely adopted Temp Worker Bill of Rights is essential to eliminate pay disparities and increase oversight of temporary staffing agencies. These kinds of protections have already been passed in New Jersey and Illinois. According to Maddali, temp worker organizing is also an irreducible component to strengthening protections on job sites. 

GLOW has found that a direct hire and a temp worker working side-by-side often live different realities. “On average, the temp worker made $4 less an hour, and workplace injuries and fatalities were about four times higher for them because they were not getting safety training or personal protective equipment,” Maddali added.

Knowing these unfair conditions, Green Workers Alliance’s overarching mission is to foster collective power and better oversight for more solar and wind workers. Beaulieu knows that achieving these goals will require educating his colleagues about their rights —at every level of the solar workers’ employee structure. “A lot of these people fear retaliation, and they’re not educated in regards to the legal aspect. But managers can’t fire you for complaining,” he said.

Mayers is optimistic that, much like the success of worker struggles in the past, the subpar labor conditions of green workers can be reversed, too. “There are two paths forward. There’s continuing on this race-to-the-bottom path, where work in this industry and others is being done by folks who are taken advantage of as long as the companies can get away with it,” he said. “And the other path is to come up with a high-road model: helping people with issues on the job, building worker power. That’s the start to transforming this industry.” 

Ford Foundation’s Future of Work(ers) program recognizes that building worker power across all sectors, industries and demographics is essential to combatting precarity. By amplifying the voices of workers, we know that we can address the green energy transition, gender based violence and harassment, industrial surveillance and algorithmic harm. When workers lead, a just economy that fosters just communities and a just future for everyone is possible.

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India’s Women Leaders: Empowering Communities, Inspiring Change

15 October 2024

• Ford Foundation

For India to reach its highest potential, significant and sustained investments in women and girls are essential. While gender disparities have existed for generations, the combined efforts of government, businesses, philanthropy, and grassroots movements in women’s leadership are paving the way towards a more equitable future for India.

हम | When Women Lead, a book released earlier this year from UN Women India, supported by the Ford Foundation, explores this momentum and introduces us to 75 remarkable women who are transforming their communities and beyond. Their leadership stands as an example of the potential across India, a country that is home to 300 million women ages 18-35 and has over a million women in local governance roles. This book calls us to imagine what is possible when women have greater access to education, economic opportunities, and financial resources. It was developed by an all-women team of nine writers, three photographers, and the noted writer and noted Indian feminist writer and publisher Urvashi Butalia, who edited the book. 

“The question is no longer about ‘Why women leaders?’” writes Reshma Anand, Ford Foundation’s regional director for India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, in हम | When Women Lead. “It’s time to ask instead, ‘How can we support India’s vibrant women leaders?’”

The book highlights the multifaceted nature of women’s leadership across India. The stories shed light on the innovative solutions borne of local needs and contexts, and how these women used inclusive decision-making approaches to amplify underrepresented voices and drive sustainable development. As noted in its pages, women in leadership positions often consider factors beyond personal gains to build more resilient communities. They recognize that empathetic decision-making and conflict-resolution tactics uplift everyone in their communities, paving the way for future generations of women leaders. 

“India has undergone a transformative journey in recognizing the pivotal role of women in development, and this book stands as a testament to the significant strides we have made,” Amitabh Kant, India’s G20 sherpa and the former chief executive officer of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), wrote in a letter accompanying the book. “The narratives woven within these pages resonate with the impact of transformative policies, initiatives, and programs championed by the government to empower women across diverse sectors.”

Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, shared similar zeal at the book’s launch at a United Nations Commission on the Status of Women event. “A concerted effort to galvanize India’s vibrant base of women leaders at the frontline will be the country’s unique advantage to contribute to sustainable development goals,” he said. “I hope this book enthuses and excites those with the resources, the policies, and the platforms to partner and unlock India’s gender dividend.”

Now, meet some of the amazing women featured in हम | When Women Lead.

Archana Mane

Archana Mane is a member of the board of directors of Manjari Sakhi Producer Company, a women-led farming group working to develop a sustainable and fair value chain in Marathwada, Maharashtra, where she grew up.

The only child in her family to receive any formal education, she put herself through university as an adult and mother. After graduating, she became an entrepreneur, farmer, and community leader. When a four-year drought hit Marathwada, Mane played a key role in promoting drought-resistant agriculture, led her village in building water-harvesting structures, fought for local women’s financial independence, helped start small businesses, and advocated for water conservation.
“When one woman breaks barriers and sets out on her journey, she inspires others to do so, too,” she told the authors of हम  | When Women Lead.

Dr. Gayatri Swahar

“The patriarchy is astoundingly high in agriculture,” said Bengaluru-based industrial sociologist Dr. Gayatri Swahar. “A village woman is conditioned to feel that it’s wrong to be paid more than a man, even if she’s earned it.” 

Dr. Swahar’s story started with the launch of her food start-up, Y-Cook, which partnered with an initial 13 local farmers to create a sustainable supply chain. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she’d begun exporting to 12 countries, but supply chain disruptions ground business to a halt. She pivoted and took an Indian Administrative Fellowship with the Karnataka state government to bring start-up culture into its agriculture sector. 

She also began to mentor CEOs of Farmer Produce Organizations (FPOs) on marketing skills and global agricultural practices. Many of the farmers she worked with in her new position were women, but few had any decision-making power. She worked hard to change this, mentoring women CEOs on how to stay their ground in a male-dominated society and helping found a women-led FPO collective. 

“Given half a chance, women can do so much,” she said.

Kumari Girls

Dipika, Priti, Rani, Aparna, Usha, and Puja Kumari were 18-year-old high school students when Cyclone Yaas devastated Odisha and West Bengal in May 2021—only a year after electricity cuts during the pandemic had forced many students like them to miss classes.

Motivated to address the problems they and other villagers faced regularly when their electricity went out, the teenagers underwent extensive training as solar panel installation technicians, began to manufacture and repair LED bulbs, and studied electrical repairing skills through a vocational training program. Together, they invented a solar-powered charger for mobile phones made largely of waste materials: The tripod comes from discarded pipes, and the switchboard and batteries are recycled. 

“So many of our friends are already married. Girls in our village seldom have a choice; parents get them married as soon as they finish the 9th or 10th grade because they can’t support them,” the Kumari women—who named themselves “the Tech Giants”—said. “We’re not going to be like this. We’ve learned these skills so we can be financially independent, and we hope to open up a different path for other girls in our village.”

Jhulan Goswami

“I want young women in India not to fear pressure and to seek their passion as if their lives depended on it,” said Jhulan Goswami, a retired international cricket player.

Goswami, who is celebrated in India as one of the most important women to ever play the male-dominated sport, grew up in the village of Chakdaha in a remote area of West Bengal. Her parents weren’t keen on her pursuing cricket, but her coach convinced them to let her for two years. At the age of 15, she began traveling to Kolkata, about 70 kilometers away, for practice three days a week. She made her international debut at 19 and played for more than 20 years, including for the India women’s national cricket team.  

Today, she mentors, scouts, and sponsors cricket training and education for girls from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Drishana Kalita

Drishana Kalita founded Puppet People, a group that uses the regional art of folk puppetry to raise awareness about issues including early marriage, girls’ education, gender equality, sanitation, menstruation, and gender-based violence. 

“I saw a fair amount of gender violence in my childhood, which troubled me,” Kalita said. “I also noticed that traditional puppetry was becoming almost extinct. I felt like I could do something that combined both.”

Puppet People, based in Assam, works with women writers to develop scripts, with a focus on reimagining the misogyny in folk stories as well as working with local communities to tackle inequality and encourage dialogues of change. The organization created the first-ever puppet show in the Sadri language, which is spoken by the state’s tea tribes. The use of their language encouraged the community to take part in conversations on issues including teenage pregnancy and human trafficking.

Sandhya Gupta

“I’ve often been one of the very few women wherever I’ve gone,” said Sandhya Gupta, the founder of Aavishkaar, an organization dedicated to STEM education. “It didn’t discourage me; instead, I saw it as an opportunity.”

Gupta trained initially as an engineer, earned a doctorate, and studied again for a masters in public affairs from the Humphrey Institute in Minneapolis. Then, determined to make a difference in the lives of women and girls, she returned to India and began working with organizations dedicated to girls’ education.

She found that there were many more girls than boys in public educational settings, and that many of the girls expressed that they were intimidated by math. She founded Aavishkaar in order to create pathways for girls to enter STEM fields and address math anxiety among students. Today, Aavishkaar has trained hundreds of women to become skilled math educators.

“Dream and pursue your dreams,” Gupta said. “Nothing can stop you if you believe in yourself.”

Photo credits:
Archana Mane: Swati Kamble, UN Women – Gayatri Swahar: Krithika Sriram, UN Women – Kumari Girls: Ruhani Kaur, UN Women – Jhulan Goswami: Paromita Chatterjee, UN Women – Drishana Kalita: Sahiba Chawdhary, UN Women – Sandhya Gupta: Mithila Jariwala, UN Women

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A Path to Justice: The Ford Foundation’s Commitment to an Energy Transition in Indonesia

24 September 2024

• Maryati Abdullah, Program Officer, Indonesia

Amid the steam and steel of Indonesia’s coal fuel power plants (CFPP), you’ll find something else: change. The country has committed to retiring 15% of its CFPPs by the year 2030. It’s a remarkable shift for a country that produces over 60% of its power with coal. 

And that’s just the beginning. 

The shift away from coal is just one story playing out against the backdrop of a broader emerging energy change in Indonesia—and it is powered by the Indonesian Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) program. 

As the world’s fourth most populous country and a rapidly developing economy, Indonesia faces significant opportunities and hurdles in shifting from fossil-based to renewable energy sources. A just energy transition in Indonesia involves not only increasing the share of renewables in the national energy mix but also ensuring the transition to this new mix is fair, equitable, and inclusive. This requires a multifaceted approach that addresses economic, social, and environmental aspects to ensure that the benefits of clean energy are accessible to all Indonesians while ensuring that the costs of the transition are equitably distributed.

In November 2022, the president of Indonesia and the International Partners Group (IPG), led by the United States and Japan, reached an investment agreement to support Indonesia in its shift towards sustainable energy sources. Known as a Just Energy Transition Partnership, or JETP, this agreement is only the second of its kind after South Africa. (Vietnam and Senegal have now also become JETP recipient countries as well.) It mobilized a $20 billion funding package to help reach climate goals in the region with financial support and technical assistance from countries in the Global North. The partnership seeks to cap emissions, boost renewable energy to at least 34% of Indonesia’s total power generation by 2030, and chart a course toward net-zero emissions by 2050.

However, this partnership is about more than financing: It is about facilitating a holistic transition that respects the balance between environmental sustainability and socioeconomic equity. In other words, it’s about justice in all its forms. 

The concept of a “just transition” is built on three fundamental principles: distributive justice, which ensures the economic benefits of energy transitions are shared broadly; procedural justice, which emphasizes the importance of accountability and the inclusion all stakeholders in decision-making processes; and restorative justice, which seeks to address the historical and ongoing harms caused by environmental degradation. 

Today, more people are realizing that any discussion around a just energy transition can’t only be about the environment. Equally important is centering economic justice, development, the future of sustainable financial models, and new kinds of inclusive economies. 

Indonesia is home to 160 coal mines and 234 coal-fired power plants. As Indonesia retires its aging coal-fueled power plants, anyone who currently works in the industry will ultimately be out of a job. The businesses that sustained the sector—from coal transportation workers to equipment maintenance teams—will also become obsolete, and these closures will affect both individuals and communities in coal-dependent regions.

A truly just energy transition must foster new job opportunities in emerging sectors, secure energy affordability, and enhance community resilience. Indeed, those who are most impacted by economic changes and climate threats must have an opportunity to actively participate in the transition process. 

Ambitious targets also bring challenges: High initial costs, technological limitations, and the need for substantial infrastructural overhaul pose significant barriers. And the geographic diversity of the archipelago—which includes 17,508 islands with over 700 languages—complicates the widespread deployment of uniform technological solutions.

Thankfully, the development of just energy transition policies has invited a broad range of stakeholders to the table, from government bodies and policymakers to investors, civil society organizations, and affected communities. This inclusive approach is essential for crafting policies that are effective and equitable, ensuring that they serve the broad public interest without imposing undue burdens on the most vulnerable populations.

Just three months after the JETP declaration, Indonesia and the IPG launched the JETP Secretariat as the coordinator for internal and external stakeholders. Indonesia has also established a governance structure for implementing JETP. Last year, the country released its Comprehensive Investment and Policy Plan document, which will guide the JETP implementation.

The Ford Foundation’s Indonesia regional office has provided active support to the just energy transition work, including the partnership efforts.  Our work has focused on engaging and strengthening civil society and ensuring that strong justice frameworks and gender inclusivity are central to this work. For example, we’ve proposed just transition working groups to support the JETP Secretariat and provided a grant that has directly engaged those working groups. For instance, with Ford’s support, the JETP Secretariat worked with the Indonesia Center for Environmental Law to conduct public consultations for civil society groups to help shape the country’s plan for implementing JETP.

The Institute for Essential Services Reform also facilitated a forum in South Sumatra, the largest coal producer in Indonesia, where policymakers from the region came together to discuss ways to increase the province’s use of clean energy. Local models piloted in the Lahat-South Sumatra province can inform work in other coal-producing districts and help advance the national energy transition strategy.  

Rumah Energi Foundation, another partner, has showcased the potential of community-led renewable energy projects in Eastern Indonesia. Working alongside a women’s cooperative, Rumah Energi has empowered local farming communities to harness solar energy for agricultural processing. This initiative decreases dependence on grid electricity and promotes economic independence, presenting a scalable model for sustainable development across similar regions globally. A recent analysis by Climate Policy Initiative Indonesia focused on how four other successful community-based renewable energy projects in Eastern Indonesia reinforce the importance of community ownership by ensuring local governments, village-owned enterprises, and households are managing renewable energy grids collectively to advance a just and inclusive transition. 

Ford also supports JETPs globally by providing funding, expertise, and a platform for convening stakeholders. In 2023, Ford hosted a convening among Indonesia, South Africa, and Vietnam—countries that, despite their different contexts and energy profiles, face common challenges in their energy transitions. The event, held in Jakarta,  conducted a field visit to the Pelabuhan Ratu Coal-Fired Power Plant—one of the CFPPs under the decommissioning plan—and facilitated critical dialogues about best practices, as well as shared learnings in overcoming the socioeconomic and technological hurdles associated with decommissioning coal power. The results were recently shared in the Navigating the Just Energy Transition Together report.

JETPs are far from perfect solutions, but they mark substantial progress toward addressing the global and historical injustices embedded in all global and national energy systems. The Global North has emitted an estimated 92% of the world’s total emissions while demanding the Global South make these transitions with no meaningful financial support—until now. However, this new still support falls dramatically short of what is necessary or just. In the case of Indonesia, grants account for just a small portion of the $20 billion, with only one-third of the money coming at concessional rates. 

Still, the JETP model illustrates how greater involvement from civil society organizations, enhanced coalition-building, and increased collaboration between the private sector and governments can each play a part in the climate discussion. Most importantly, it positions governments in the Global South to assume leadership roles in international forums to secure the financing needed to expedite their moves away from fossil fuels despite existing inefficiencies. However, it’s worth noting that securing fair and adequate financing remains difficult due to the slow pace and limited scope of pledged funding, which falls short of covering the entire cost of the just energy transition.

As we move forward, the lessons from Indonesia’s just energy transition are clear: Inclusivity is not optional but essential. The journey toward sustainability must be paved with equity, cooperation, and justice—and the willingness of developed countries to provide more funding at concessionary rates. This story doesn’t just hold promise for Indonesia; it could offer valuable signposts for the world, illustrating how deeply intertwined environmental sustainability is with social and financial equity at the national and global levels. 

Ultimately, through the JETP, we are reimagining an energy framework and redefining what it means to achieve progress together, ensuring that no one is left behind in our collective journey toward a cleaner, more equitable future.

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Fulfilling Our Commitment: Third Annual Update on Our Pledge for Tenure Rights and Forest Guardianship of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

20 September 2024

• Ford Foundation

Today, the Ford Foundation shares our third annual update on our COP 26 pledge to support the tenure rights and forest guardianship of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs). 

From August 1, 2023, to July 31, 2024, we approved $30.9 million* in funding aligned with the goals of that pledge, supporting the vital work of the organizations listed below. In the first three-and-a-half years of the five-year pledge, we’ve approved $119 million in funding, exceeding our $100 million commitment. 

In implementing our commitment, we’ve paid close attention to direct support, which is the proportion of our pledge-aligned funding going directly to IP and LC organizations and networks. Here, too, we’ve made meaningful progress. In this reporting period, 51% of funding was direct support, compared to 24% last year and 17% in the first year after the pledge. This is partly the result of increased support to IP and LC organizations through our Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) initiative. If we also include funds regranted to IP and LC groups by trusted partners, we estimate that 65% of our recent funding reached IP and LC groups in ways they influence or control.

Still, our work is far from finished. It is more important than ever to support the long-term resilience of organizations and movements of IPs and LCs and their efforts to strengthen tenure rights and governance. Indeed, there is no viable solution to the climate crisis without the work of IPs and LCs and respect for their rights.  

We will continue to do our part to accelerate the transparent, accountable, and effective implementation of the IP and LC pledge by:

• Posting at least one more update on our progress through the full five-year pledge period
• Working with the Forest Tenure Funders Group (FTFG) to support overall annual reporting by pledge signatories and translation of the annual report into multiple languages
• Continuing discussions with IP and LC partners about how we and other funders can be more responsive to their needs and aspirations
• Learning with and from other funders on best practices for supporting tenure rights and forest guardianship, including attention to the intersection of issues such as gender and disability
• Using our financial, communicative, and facilitative resources to lift up the work of IP and LC organizations and the growing ecosystem of IP- and LC-controlled territorial funds, including the many we support 

Most importantly, the Ford Foundation commits to joining a second pledge after 2025 and encouraging other funders to do the same. For many reasons, COP 30 in Brazil next year will be a compelling moment to deliver an even more ambitious commitment.

This year, two of our grantees, The Rights and Resources Initiative and Rainforest Foundation Norway, have released new research on trends in funding for IP and LC tenure rights and forest guardianship. They found that disbursements have averaged $517 million annually since 2020, a 36% increase from the prior four-year average, and they attribute 72% of this increase to the work of the IP and LC pledge signatories. This finding agrees with our observations and experiences—that the pledge, though insufficient, has made the remarkable work of IPs and LCs more visible and provided a modest but much-needed increase in support for their work. 

As the first IP and LC pledge nears its end in December 2025, funders now have the chance to design a “pledge 2.0” that is more ambitious in substance and form. The Ford Foundation looks forward to engaging with peer funders, IP and LC organizations, and other partners to explore how to make the most of this opportunity.

More About Our Commitment

Stories 29 Sep. 2022

Keeping Our Commitment: Update on Our Pledge for Tenure Rights and Forest Guardianship of Indigenous Peoples

Ford Foundation

Stories 18 Sep. 2023

Keeping Our Commitment: Second Annual Update on Our Pledge for Tenure Rights and Forest Guardianship of Indigenous Peoples

Ford Foundation

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Disability Rights Are Voting Rights

16 September 2024

• Rebecca Cokley, Program Officer, U.S. Disability Rights
• Erika L. Wood, Senior Program Officer, Civic Engagement and Government, Senior Advisor, Vice President of U.S. Programs

When Detroit Disability Power volunteers audited the city’s polling places for accessibility compliance in 2022, they found something troubling. They looked at four categories of accessibility required by law—accessible parking, accessible entrances, wheelchair-height voting booths, and accessible voting machines—and found that only 12% of the city’s polling places offered all four. 

But that percentage doesn’t tell the whole story: Even when polling places had wheelchair-height voting booths, they often weren’t private. And when they had accessible voting machines, staff weren’t always trained in how to use them. When a quick trip to the polls becomes a 45-minute back-and-forth between staff members figuring out which buttons to press and cords to plug in, many disabled voters may decide that voting is simply not worth the hassle.

This isn’t just a Detroit issue, and this isn’t just a “disability issue.” This is a democracy issue. And it’s happening across the country.

For too long, we’ve seen issues of accessibility sidelined in voting-rights advocacy, or, worse, used in bad faith to shut down polling places that are already too few and far between. 

There is a troubling history in our country of pitting accessibility against election integrity: if it’s easy to vote, the argument goes, then some of those votes must be illegitimate. This idea, of course, has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked, but misinformation persists, and it acts as a barrier to meaningful change—making it harder for everyone to access their vote. 

The impacts are significant. A 2022 survey by the U.S. Election Assistance Committee found disabled voters had difficulty voting or needed assistance at a rate three times higher than able-bodied voters. The survey estimated that if disabled voters had voted at the same rate as non-disabled voters, there would have been 2 million more votes cast in the 2020 election—which, it’s worth noting, was already far more accessible than typical elections because of pandemic-necessitated changes to early and mail-in voting.

Disabled voters represent a vulnerable constituency that has much to gain—and therefore to lose—at the ballot box. They do not exist in an identity vacuum: disabled voters are also voters of color, transgender voters, young voters, low-income voters, and voters who care about climate change and reproductive rights and the economy. 

Their votes matter because of the diverse perspectives they represent; they are often intentionally suppressed for the same reason. “Voters with disabilities are the last constituency that can lose the right to vote based on their identity,” Michelle Bishop of the National Disability Rights Network shared with Ford, referring to both to voter suppression and the loss of voting rights that comes with entering into a guardianship. To deny disabled voters easy, equal access to the polls is to deny them access to their fundamental rights as Americans—to make their voices heard, to vote for people and policies that materially impact their lives, to participate in the project of our democracy. 

And beyond the benefit for disabled voters, more accessible elections benefit us all. We saw this in 2020. Mail-in voting helps immunocompromised voters safely cast their ballots; it also helps busy parents who don’t have time to wait in line, college students away at school, and people who would just prefer to fill out their ballots thoughtfully and in their own time. Accessible voting machines help blind voters cast their ballots privately and independently; they can also easily be used by anyone else. Using more long-term care facilities as polling places would help residents vote easily and independently; they’re also more likely to be designed with wheelchair access in mind. Accessibility might matter most for disabled voters, but it makes a difference for everyone. 

“Making the system work for everyone means having a menu of options. There will never be a one-size-fits-all, silver bullet voting solution.”

Michelle Bishop

“Making the system work for everyone means having a menu of options,” Michelle Bishop said. “There will never be a one-size-fits-all, silver bullet voting solution.”

At the Ford Foundation, we see our work for democracy and our work for disability rights as inextricably intertwined. We fund a mix of grassroots, policy, and advocacy organizations that support nonpartisan voter accessibility efforts in communities that have historically been marginalized or underrepresented across the country.

We’re proud to support groups like Detroit Disability Power, the National Disability Rights Network, New Disabled South, and the American Association of People with Disabilities, all of which work to put the needs of disabled people at the center of their organizing for justice. And we’ve been encouraged to see increased collaborations among disability organizations and voting rights partners like the Texas Civil Rights Project, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Mississippi Center for Justice. 

“No matter what issues folks are working on, there are disabled people in those organizations and in those communities, period,” Dessa Cosma, the Executive Director of Detroit Disability Power, told Ford. “So when movements or organizations or campaigns are not focused on disability justice as a part of their work, they are marginalizing their own people. And that makes no sense.”

Our vision for democracy is one where every American is empowered to participate in the electoral process in ways that are accessible to them, and we’re proud of the work our grantees do every day to make that possible.

Fundamentally, we believe that the case for accessibility is the case for democracy. Disability rights are human rights, and disability rights are civil rights, and disability rights are voting rights. There is nothing more fundamentally American than the ability to participate in democracy. 

This is an issue not for some of us but for all of us—because until everyone is guaranteed access to the ballot, all of us are denied access to the promise of democracy.

Related Grantees

• Michigan Disability Rights Coalition
• National Disability Rights Network Inc.
• New Disabled South, Inc.
• American Association of People with Disabilities
• Texas Civil Rights Project
• Brennan Center for Justice
• Mississippi Center for Justice

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