On March 10th, just two days after International Women’s Day, grassroots feminist organizers from around the globe gathered virtually to celebrate the launch of the Decolonial Feminist Popular Education facilitator’s guidebook.
From radio to popular education, our partners like Haiti's Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP) use methods that are sensitive to the people they’re reaching.
In 2017 Grassroots International launched the Global Peasant Solidarity Movement Building Initiative, a series of projects coordinated in collaboration with our partner the Landless Workers Movement/ Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). This initiative, now in its second year, supports international social movements as they strengthen the infrastructure of regional learning centers, independent media production and popular communications trainings, political education, and global solidarity.
In this short video, you can hear the words of three important leaders from Honduras speaking about the situation facing Indigenous peoples and their environments in Honduras: Berta Cáceres (via recorded video), renowned Indigenous rights and environmental leader who was assassinated last year; Miriam Miranda, the well-known Garifuna (Afro-Honduran) leader and advocate; and Bertha Z. Cáceres, daughter of Berta who is herself an outspoken advocate for indigenous and environmental justice.
In September 2016, Grassroots International and our colleagues at IDEX participated in an amazing learning exchange in Brazil.
International Development Exchange (IDEX) and Grassroots International have teamed up to spread these practices among their grassroots grantee-partners in the Global South.
All people have the right to decide what they eat and to ensure that food in their community is healthy and accessible for everyone. This is the basic principle behind food sovereignty. If you want to support domestic food security...
“Food for Thought and Action: A Food Sovereignty Curriculum is a remarkably useful popular education tool. It offers a practical way to strengthen a growing food sovereignty movement that includes consumers, farmers, environmentalists and faith communities. Building from the experiences...
Grassroots International supporter Richard Smith has just published Green Capitalism: The God That Failed (a downloadable e-book). It's an important read because it argues convincingly that environmental destruction is an inevitable result of production for profit, so that advocates of "regulated" or "green" capitalism are raising false hopes.
Grassroots International is hard at work across the U.S. and beyond putting issues such as climate justice, food sovereignty, resource rights, Palestine, women’s leadership—even when they are controversial or unpopular—into the limelight.
Spreading the word is a key strategy we use to advance resource rights, particularly when it comes to connecting our Global South partners to sources of solidarity, funding and support, and making changes in policies here in the U.S. We do more than give grants; we build solidarity right here in the U.S. for our partners and their social movements. It is also a key reason why funders and donors choose Grassroots International as a vehicle to support them.
This spring, Grassroots International was invited to participate in a project of the Kindle Project called the "Indie Philanthropy Initiative." For more information about the project, visit indph.org. The interview below includes reflections from Nikhil Aziz and Sara Mersha.
How do you do your funding and please describe your organization’s approach and process, explaining how it is different from conventional philanthropy.
After going into hospice care, the Rev. Dr. John Fish decided that he wants to distribute some of his lifetime of savings to organizations he believes in while he is still alive because, as he says, “if we are going to achieve social justice, it will have to come from strengthening those on the bottom because it is never going to happen from the top down. And I am so glad I can help. I encourage others to do so also.” When asked why he so consistently supported Grassroots International over the years and chooses to include Grassroots in his legacy giving, John’s response is both humble and profound.
The future success of global social movements depends largely on cultivating the next generation of activists. With the support of Grassroots International, local groups around the world are organizing creative social, political and environmental awareness programs explicitly engaging youth. Below are a few highlights from some of the grants we made this past year.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Answers Concerning the Separation Wall in Israel-Palestine, Elbit Systems, TIAA-CREF and Resource Rights Israel is currently building a Separation Wall in the West Bank that seizes land and water in Palestine and severely impacts food production....
A critical aspect of fostering progressive social movements is a funder’s ability to monitor and evaluate (M&E) the social change process, while learning from partners on the ground as well as from each other. Over 28 years of accompanying progressive social movements, Grassroots International, an international development and human rights funder dedicated to supporting social movements in the Global South, continues to hone its ability to monitor and evaluate social change. From Grassroots’ perspective, a strong monitoring and evaluation process is critical to strengthening the grantmaking process and equally as important in building relationships with partners and grantees. M&E strengthens grantmaking in a number of ways, including:
Grassroots International partner and leading peasant movement, the Via Campesina produced a new video presenting its struggle for peasant's agriculture and food sovereignty all around the world. The 20-minute film interviews farmers, land activists and movement participants from across the world discussing what food sovereignty means to them, and how small farmers can provide solutions to global hunger and climate disruption.
From REDD to COP-16 to pending US legislation like ACES, the climate change debate has become a whirlwind of confusing acronyms, new (or newly branded) technologies, data and concepts. Yet these seemingly incomprehensible policy debates will set the rules not only...
Grassroots International recently supported a delegation of Haitian social movements to attend the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit. This diverse group represented several of our partners and allies on the ground in Haiti and offered them a unique networking and educational platform.
Doudou Pierre, representing our partner the National Congress of the Papaye Peasant Movement and our close ally, the National Haitian Network for Food Security and Food Sovereignty, recently told us that the experience changed his perception of the U.S.Some of the advice for how Haiti ought to rebuild after the earthquake sounds hauntingly familiar, echoing the same bad development advice that Haiti has received for decades -- even before the nation faced its current devastating situation. To avoid repeating the past failures, we would be wise to review how previous aid models led down the wrong path.
As the food crisis showed us last year, adding food to the speculation market can have serious -- and sometimes deadly -- consequences when the bubble bursts. Surprisingly, the food and gas crises weren’t caused by a shortage of food or oil. Instead, they were brought on by the same thing that caused the global economic crisis – market deregulation. While we had to pay more for our gas and food, big-time investors made a bundle. A new video and accompanying website helps explain how speculators brought about last year’s food and oil bubbles.
