Explore Our Community Action Grants

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Mujeres Amazónicas (Women Defenders of the Amazon)

$20,000 to support Mujeres Amazónicas for several Indigenous women-led events and mobilizations in the Ecuadorian Amazon city of Puyo organized around International Women’s Day and highlighting Indigenous women’s leadership in the resistance to extractive industries on Indigenous territories. Additionally grant funds are supporting the Mujeres Amazónicas managed emergency health fund, which is continuing to provide Covid related support to women land defenders and their families in remote villages throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon.

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Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas

$10,000 to support Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas’ Bridges to the Ancestors youth-led run/walk, a 10-day journey across west Texas and down to Rio Grande Valley, including hosting town hall meetings at frontline community stops along the route, to further raise awareness about LNG’s impacts and build alliances. The Rio Grande Valley LNG and Texas LNG export terminals, if built, along with the Rio Bravo pipeline, would spew as much greenhouse emissions as approximately 40.4 million cars on the road per year, impact sacred Indigenous sites, pave over a “greenfield” of undeveloped wetlands, pollute nearby wildlife refuges, and divide a national wildlife corridor, transforming sites near the Port of Brownsville into industrial-scale export hubs complete with storage tanks, flare stacks, and explosion risks.

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Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement

$25,000 to contribute to supporting participation of more than 100 Black and Indigenous participants from across the Americas attending a weeklong Anti-Mining Camp in the Kichwa community of Serena in Napo in the Ecuadorian Amazon. To combat extractivism, the Anti-Mining Camp is providing an opportunity for the Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement network to embark on a joint community organizing, capacity building, and storytelling journey as part of efforts to develop collective grassroots anti-mining strategies.

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Organización Waorani de Pastaza (OWAP)

$5,000 to support Indigenous leader from Ecuador, Nemonte Nenquimo, the co-founder of the Indigenous organization Ceibo Alliance and the first woman leader of the Waorani people to attend Climate Week in New York City to share lessons learned and engage people through events and dialogues around next steps to secure long term protection for the Upper Amazon through Indigenous-led solutions. Nenquimo is taking part in Climate Week events in New York this year in the wake of a historic climate victory: the passing of a national referendum in Ecuador to protect the Yasuní rainforest, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

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Yasunidos

$10,000 to support national level organizing and media campaigns as part of the successful Ecuadorian referendum on whether to keep the country’s largest oil fields, the “Ishpingo – Tiputini – Tambococha” (ITT), known as block 43, permanently in the ground. Block 43 covers the northeast part of Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon, among the most biodiverse places on Earth and home to Indigenous peoples living in isolation.

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Fundación Alianza Ceibo

$15,000 to support an Indigenous-led Women’s Leadership School that is promoting a new model for economic, environmental, and cultural resilience led by women in some of the Indigenous societies hit hardest by oil extraction, mining, and agriculture in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The school is designed to bring women together to foster empowerment and livelihood opportunities while bolstering economic resilience, food sovereignty and traditional healing systems through a collaborative design process with Kofán, Siona, Secoya and Waorani stakeholder communities, as well as providing accompaniment for 5 community-based women’s associations.

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Organización Waorani de Pastaza (OWAP) and Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE)

$5,000 to support two inspiring Indigenous leaders from Ecuador, Nemonte Nenquimo, the co-founder of the Indigenous organization Ceibo Alliance and the first woman leader of the Waorani people, and Leonidas Iza Salazar, who was elected last June as the new president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), towards the transportation, accommodation, and day-to-day expenses of bringing them from the Amazon rainforest to participate in panels, workshops, keynote speaking events, and climate marches during Climate Week NYC.

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Yayasan PUSAKA

$5,000 to support Papua-based organizations planning and hosting side events for the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) Congress, which happens every 5 years and was held in 2022 in Papua, Indonesia. Activities included a workshop for the broader AMAN network focusing on the particular circumstances the Indigenous land rights movement is facing in Papua, and a series of additional panels, workshops, and events throughout the week held in a special exhibition space organized by the Papuan partners to highlight specific land rights struggles, storytelling and documentary initiatives, successful campaign strategies and sustainable alternative economic models, and Indigenous women’s leadership, among many other topics.
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Lembaga Pemberdayaan Ekonomi dan Sosial Masyarakat Riau (LPESM Riau)

$10,000 to support a weeklong delegation of Indigenous and traditional community representatives from Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua, Indonesia, along with NGO partners supporting their land rights cases, to participate and intervene in the Forest Stewardship Council General Assembly regarding the FSC certification system’s current impact on communities in Indonesia. Through participation in the 10-person delegation, community representatives have an opportunity to directly communicate with the FSC Board regarding updates to their land rights cases and to request responses on the status of their complaints and pressure for expedited resolution processes.

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Rumoh Transparansi

$5,000 to support submitting results from a participatory mapping process for Bunin Village to keep protected from a palm oil plantation nearly 7,000 acres of community-held lands and lowland rainforest in an area known as an important habitat for critically endangered Sumatran elephants in the Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra, Indonesia.