Photo credit: Asociación ANDES, a partner of Agroecology Fund

  • "From the North to the South, social movements led by frontline communities can guide us through this generational crisis of ethics and leadership. We must build solidarity bridges with movements around the world working for our collective freedom."

    — Solomé Lemma, Thousand Currents

Our Global Roots Fund supports grassroots efforts in the Caribbean and Americas to strengthen political and cultural power, preserve biodiversity, and reshape economies in service of a thriving planet.

STRATEGIC FOCUS

The traditional wisdom and self-determined visions of climate-impacted communities inform and guide Panta Rhea’s mission for a just and sustainable world. This approach builds on our donors’ and founders’ decades-long support of emergent efforts in Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines by leveraging our partner relationships, language capacity, and modest staffing in key regions.

 

The climate crisis affects everyone, yet communities around the globe have not contributed to it equally, nor are the impacts spread fairly. Instead, people who steward the planet’s most bioculturally vibrant places often face the frontlines of environmental chaos, layered on the compounding, unjust legacies of colonialization and slavery. As a foundation founded and based in the United States, we see mobilizing funding across borders and resourcing communities most vulnerable to climate impact.

 

Panta Rhea’s Global Roots Fund resources nurture and connect local, self-defined movements for self-determination, sustainable development, and reparations. We see ecosystems of frontline land, air, sea, and culture stewards—often Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities—as the ones who can best use independent, charitable resources so that we all can thrive and not just survive on this planet.

 

We launched our Global Roots Fund in late 2020.

GRANTEE PARTNERSHIPS

Our Global Roots Fund redistributes funds primarily through:

  • Values-aligned movement partners with deep presence in the Caribbean and Americas;
  • Local, democratically governed, and/or participatory frontline defender funds;
  • Emergent community-based ecosystems where we can complement the existing landscape;
  • Research, legal accompaniment, communications, and other community-sourced technical allies for the work above.

 

Examples of our global and regional partners include:

 

At the local level, we’re honored to support a number of country-based grantee clusters in the Caribbean and Americas, and to partner deeply with the native Raizal community in the Western Caribbean archipelagos of San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina islands, which together comprise a department of Colombia.

STRATEGY AREAS

We respond to and reflect the grantee partners we support. Thus our grantmaking framework is dynamic in nature, and varies across people and places. Examples of the types of efforts we’re honored to support include:

 

Collective Consciousness and Action

We support home-grown socio-political, environmental, and economic education that builds awareness and understanding in service of community preservation, healing, and evolution. Our partners see this as fundamental for nurturing formal and informal collective action now and in the generations to come.

 

Community-Driven Projects

We seed projects that enable everyday people to build environmental, economic, and social alternatives for their livelihoods and souls. This often centers food and cultural sovereignty through fishing, farming, and traditional arts, integrating cooperative models.

 

Advocacy & Communications

We support community-driven policy advocacy, litigation, and communications efforts that result in concrete changes in peoples’ lives. We resource indigenous and Afro-desdencant communities to reclaim or enforce their ancestral rights, including the means to gather, strategize, engage technical experts, and make their voices heard.

 

Ecosystem Support

We prioritize collective and individual leadership development and coaching, investment in organizations’ legal and financial infrastructure, frontline leaders’ safety and security, and development of values-aligned fundraising strategies and relationships with thought partnership from Panta Rhea’s Resilience and Renewal program.

FUNDER PARTNERSHIPS

We are primarily inspired and called to action in spaces convened by our grantee partners and their home communities. We also engage in globally-minded, intersectional affinity groups including:

FOR GRANTSEEKERS

Unfortunately, due to our modest team capacity, we are unable to respond to unsolicited inquiries. We encourage you to explore opportunities with our funder partners, many of which are named above.

 

FOR FUNDERS

If you are interested in learning more about our strategy, grantee partners, or if you seek input on grantmaking strategy, please reach out to info@pantarhea.org. In consideration of the privacy concerns of some of our grantee partners, we don’t list grants online. If you’d like a sample list of partners in this program, please email info@pantarhea.org.

 

FOR ALL

We regularly organize webinars and participate in events to uplift grantee partners, share our work, and learn from our colleagues inside and outside of philanthropy. You can find upcoming events on our News & Views page or sign up for our email list for updates.