Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Must Lead the Way to a Just Energy Transition

1 December 2023

• Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation
• Joan Carling, Global Director, Indigenous People’s Rights International

Basri Marzuki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

When explosions coordinated by Rio Tinto, one of the world’s biggest mining companies, destroyed a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal rock shelter in Australia, Indigenous leaders took on the multinational corporation—and won. The Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples argued that Rio Tinto never should have attempted to build an iron ore mine in the hillside of Juukan Gorge, a deeply significant site for their communities inhabited since the Ice Age. Facing pressure from shareholders,  parliamentary, and scrutiny from environmental and human rights activists like the London Mining Network, Rio Tinto apologized, paid restitution, ousted three senior leaders and two board members, and vowed to prioritize Aboriginal leaders as partners moving forward. 

This story is both a cautionary tale and a charge for corporate leaders: Include Indigenous perspectives now, or wish you had later. The ongoing relationship between Rio Tinto and Aboriginal leaders is still far from perfect, but a new arrangement, which includes both compensation and consultation, represents a modicum of progress. It is an acknowledgment that companies can no longer disregard the respective rights and voices of local, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant tribal communities in tackling the most urgent business and environmental challenges. 

Foremost among them: climate change. As leaders from government and the private sector convene for COP28 to find new frameworks for climate finance and a just energy transition, local and Indigenous voices must be front and center. And there must be a verifiable commitment to respect and protect their rights. 

As an Indigenous environmental activist and the president of a foundation committed to climate justice, we call on businesses to recognize Indigenous peoples and local communities (IP and LCs) as key stakeholders—for the sake of people, the planet, and their profits.

Meaningful collaboration requires reckoning with centuries of exploitation and well-earned distrust. Governments, colonizers, and corporations have long claimed Indigenous land as effectively terra nullius, disregarding treaty rights and extracting resources with scant regard for the health of the land or the people who know it best. They drilled oil from sacred ground, razed ancient forests, and displaced entire communities, devastating generations of local and Indigenous populations and destroying ecosystems that stood as bulwarks against climate change. 

The consequences of drilling for fossil fuels and depleting other resources are dire for both the planet and for Indigenous and local communities. Without partnership and consultation, even purportedly climate-conscious approaches can be devastating.

Nearly 70% of transition mineral projects, which mine components for batteries and other renewable energy technologies, are located on or near Indigenous land. If the private sector fails to fundamentally shift its approach to resource extraction and management, the climate agenda is on a collision course with Indigenous rights.

We’re already seeing what happens when sustainability-minded companies overlook Indigenous perspectives. Courts around the world are recognizing local and Indigenous communities as stewards of 80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity. 

In Oslo, Indigenous Sámi reindeer herders convinced Norway’s Supreme Court to stop wind farming because the farms encroached on traditional territory and impaired culturally significant reindeer herding. In Kenya, the pastoralist El Molo, Turkana, Samburu and Rendille communities successfully argued that their ancestral land had been unlawfully deeded for development, endangering their livelihoods and cultural heritage. And in the Philippines, Indigenous communities in Palawan won a cease-and-desist order against a mining company that failed to address their concerns that a new mine for nickel—an essential mineral for lithium-ion batteries—caused deforestation.

These cases argue for a more sustainable, more inclusive energy transition, guided by Indigenous wisdom and governed by the people who have tended to the land for centuries. A pro forma notification before breaking ground on a new project is insufficient. IPs and LCs must be central, respected partners in the transition to renewable energy—and private sector leaders must commit to their effective participation in decision-making and to negotiations aimed at securing their free, prior and informed consent.

Too often, business leaders mistakenly believe that engaging with these communities is unjustifiably risky or onerous and unnecessary. This cost-benefit analysis is backwards; the real risk is proceeding without Indigenous peoples’ permission and deep knowledge of their land and its resources. What is missing in these relationships, then, is a fundamental trust between partners.

We cannot fault Indigenous peoples for being skeptical of corporations that have harmed and displaced their communities for generations. That is why the private sector must approach potential partnerships with humility, offering these invaluable communities a real seat at the table and a meaningful stake in the financial success of joint projects.

For their part, climate financiers must ensure that their projects affirm Indigenous land rights and join government and philanthropy in supporting Indigenous proposals for sustainable development. Given the demand for companies to live up to their ESG commitments, investing in communities with generations of deep knowledge of the land pays both economic and ecological dividends.

With these high stakes and high returns in mind, we urge our partners in the private sector to approach COP28 with an openness to collaboration and consideration for Indigenous, African, and Afro-descendant perspectives, not only at lectures and panels but in every conversation—at the conference and beyond. Because to move forward with an energy transition that excludes Indigenous and other voices and perspectives is to replicate the disastrous system that produced this climate catastrophe in the first place.

What we face today is not a choice but an imperative: we must act now to empower Indigenous environmental stewardship and secure a more just and sustainable future for all.

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Endangered Eden: The fight to protect Ghana’s Atewa Forest

14 November 2023

• Emmanuel Kuyole, Program Officer, West Africa

When Daryl Bosu talks about Ghana’s Atewa Forest, his hometown pride is palpable. “It is one of the most breathtaking landscapes you’ll ever find in our country. It leaves an enchanting impression for anyone who steps into it,” said the conservationist, who lives close to the forest’s border. “It is very green throughout the year. The trees at the summit sit within the clouds. The water drips down the leaves.”

The Atewa Reserve is quite a backyard to have: 25,830 hectares of pristine evergreen forest situated in a mountain range in southeast Ghana. The country’s largest reserve, it is home to more than 100 globally threatened plant, bird, and animal species, including the white-necked rockfowl and Miss Waldron’s red colobus monkey. It is also the source of three major rivers—the Densu, Birim, and Ayensu—that provide water for over 5 million people, including the capital of Accra. 

Rainforests like Atewa are one of nature’s best defenses against climate change. They store carbon, stabilize the climate and act as a natural filtration system, keeping the environment healthy not only for the flora and fauna living within these forests but for humanity at large.

The Atewa Forest is now at the center of a heated dispute between the Ghanaian government—which intends to mine its abundant resources as, paradoxically, part of the country’s green energy transition—and conservation advocates like Bosu, who vow to keep them intact.

“The challenges persist, and there are many, but now a lot of people are paying attention,” said Bosu, the deputy national director of A Rocha Ghana, one of the country’s leading conservation nonprofits and a Ford grantee. “They are realizing the dire consequences of the widespread mining across the country and how we’ve taken our natural resources for granted.”

Ghana, like many countries in Africa, has an economy dominated by natural resources, both minerals and fossil fuels. It has a long, fraught history of removing these riches from its land—both by its leaders and colonizing forces—and has struggled with how to harness these resources sustainably to improve the lives of its people. Today, Ghana is the top producer of gold on the continent, with its economy also bolstered by oil and gas production and cocoa farming.

But when it comes to the Atewa Forest, the appeal is in the dirt itself, not what’s buried beneath. The reddish-brown soil that carpets the reserve is full of bauxite, a sedimentary rock that is refined into aluminum. Aluminum is crucial in the production of renewable energy devices and equipment—including solar panels and electric vehicles, two lodestar technologies in the global transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

However, extracting bauxite from the Atewa Forest means mass deforestation, displacing both rare wildlife and the local communities that use its land for agriculture and food. It means jeopardizing the watershed system that supplies clean water to so many Ghanaians and harming the exact type of ecosystem that serves as a bulwark against climate change, as forests remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and prevent drought. But it also means creating more solar products, which could aid in Ghana’s transition to green energy in time to meet the United Nations’ 2030 sustainable development goals, which Ghana and all member states have pledged to meet. So is this what the expression “between a rock and a hard place” was created for?

Not necessarily, said Bosu. A Rocha Ghana has launched an ambitious, multifaceted campaign to protect the Atewa Forest—a movement it has taken from the region’s local communities to one of Ghana’s highest courts. And Bosu and his team are not alone: Conservation advocates and scholars across the country are urging the government to preserve the forest, arguing that it’s worth more to Ghanaians intact than excavated. But the fight ahead looks long—and there are ominous debts, to the tune of $5 billion, rumbling overhead.

Ghana, like many African nations, is home to a tremendous wealth of natural resources. When managed responsibly, these resources can transform a country’s economy and create prosperous, sustainable societies that benefit all.

One of Africa’s most resource-rich nations, Ghana is no stranger to extraction. It has been a major presence in the country for close to 100 years. Before Ghana became independent in 1957, it was named the Gold Coast, an indication of the riches in its soil. For decades, the country subsisted on its production and exporting of gold, timber, and cocoa. 

Then, in 2007, Ghana’s landscape changed overnight when oil was discovered off the coast. Drilling operations sprang up and a golden era, of a different kind, ensued: Ghana halved its poverty rates by 2015 and doubled its economic growth. By 2019, the country was the world’s fastest-growing economy, demonstrating the sort of economic expansion that could be triggered by large-scale natural resource development—even as this came with international calls for the government to protect and sustainably manage its resources more carefully.

But during this time, the benefits of Ghana’s economic boom didn’t always reach its citizens. Despite hopes that the oil windfall would alleviate poverty across the country, deep economic inequality persisted geographically: The south grew more developed and wealthy, while the north, which has lagged behind since the colonial era, remained rural and destitute. According to the UNDP, roughly 65% of the north is multidimensionally poor versus only 27% in the south. The great frustration of Ghana remains unresolved: that a land with such natural wealth could also have such endemic poverty, especially in the communities where its most precious resources were located. 

“After Ghana discovered oil, there were explicit promises in terms of how oil revenues would be utilized to address historical inequalities in society. These were not met,” said Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, associate professor of development politics at the University of Ghana, a Ford grantee. “There are still huge developmental gaps between the northern parts of Ghana and the rest of the country.”

Today, Ghana’s once-robust economy is battling a financial crisis of high inflation, plummeting export revenues, and depreciation of its currency, the cedi. COVID-19 continues to weaken its tourism industry. In 2022, the poverty rate in Ghana rose to an estimated 27%, an increase of 2.2% from the previous year. And since May, there’s been yet another financial shadow over the economy: The country was approved for a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that it will need to repay.

So it’s no wonder that developing bauxite mining in Ghana feels enticing to many, a chance to right the country’s finances after a dispiriting slump. International demand for clean energy technology is rising, with countries around the world investing millions into solar manufacturing. Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo, who co-chairs the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Advocates committee, has pledged repeatedly to lead the country into a clean, equitable energy transition.

Yet it is hard to reconcile these promises with what’s happening on the ground, especially in the Atewa Forest. Bauxite has been mined for nearly 100 years across the country—as well as in Guinea and Mali—but it’s now happening in areas that were off-limits until recently. Before 2022, the government permitted just 2% of the country’s forests to be mined, with that amount granted only after a lengthy regulatory evaluation. But that year, President Akufo-Addo’s administration passed a regulation stating that he could, in the national interest, allow unlimited mining in all biodiversity-sensitive areas.

“After our 2016 presidential elections, the winning government came in with a mindset to transform Ghana’s economy with a lot of dependence on our bauxite resources,” Bosu said. “They decided to target not only the Atewa Forest, but all other places in the country that have bauxite reserves.”

Mining—whether authorized by the government or done illegally—can have devastating effects on the environment and communities that sustain off the land. From pollution to disease to violent unrest, these impacts can be prevented when extraction takes into account the needs of the people and the planet and prioritizes equal distribution.

In this new, no-holds-barred atmosphere, mining ballooned across Ghana—both large camps authorized by the government and small-scale and illegally run operations called galamsey. Land once devoted to cocoa production swiftly became mining grounds, leaving many farmers without their only source of livelihood. Forest reserves like the Atewa have not been spared. “We have seen an increase of illegal farming activities, logging, and widespread galamsey all over the forest,” Bosu said. “Many communities are of the view that, ‘Well, if the government is going to destroy the forest, why don’t I also take my pound of flesh?’” 

Professor Abdulai of the University of Ghana pointed out that restricting mining operations—especially galamsey—can be particularly challenging because of whose pockets they line. “This is a historical problem that governments upon governments have struggled with,” he said. “One reason it’s been so hard to reduce it is because it serves the interest of various power holders in society, including the political class, traditional elites, and some bureaucrats.”

“Galamsey has devastated river bodies and led to the destruction of farmlands,” Bosu added. “We are seeing health-related incidents like kidney failure in local communities who are working at these highly polluted sites and being exposed to polluted rivers and streams.”

The pollution of the Atewa Forest’s intricate watershed system is a top concern for conservationists. The three rivers that originate in the forest carve a spoke-like shape into the rest of the country: The Birim River serves all of eastern Ghana, eventually connecting to another big river called the Pra Basin, which serves the west. The Ayensu River flows from the east and ends up in the central area of the country. And the Densu River feeds the Densu Basin and the Weija Reservoir, which supplies most of Accra with drinkable water. 

“The Atewa Forest is a significant hydrological gem,” Bosu said. “It provides water for so many people downstream—and the bauxite substrate in the soil actually contributes to the water recharge process of that entire rock system. Without this forest, more than 5 million people are going to be deprived of water security. That is an issue you don’t want to gloss over.” 

Beyond this serious threat to Ghanaians’ water supply, mining the Atewa Forest risks other ecological repercussions. First, deforestation would harm its remarkable biodiversity, which the noted biologist E.O. Wilson called “of exceptional biological importance” in a 2018 letter to President Akufo-Addo urging its protection. It would also mean destabilizing the 40-plus local communities that surround the forest, most of which are farming communities that grow cocoa, oil palm, plantains, and more. Many of them also subsist on forest products, including snails, mushrooms, and medicinal plants. These forest communities have lived in harmony with nature for many years, and their wisdom is urgently needed in the current climate conversation.

More than 40 local communities depend on the Atewa Forest for food, water and their livelihoods. Mining can uproot these communities, pushing them into poverty and exacerbating social and economic inequities.

With interest in mining the forest showing no sign of slowing, A Rocha Ghana has ramped up its efforts to protect the land. In 2020, the group submitted a motion to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to pass a resolution calling for the Ghanaian government to make the forest a national park.

That same year, A Rocha Ghana led a collective of six nonprofits and four individuals in filing a case in Ghana’s High Court to establish the Atewa Reserve as a nationally protected region and overturn plans for bauxite mining. The trial began in February 2023 and is ongoing, which has meant that legal mining cannot proceed until it is resolved.

Their case lays bare an argument rooted in social justice. “Our case hinges on the fact that our constitution guarantees the right to a healthy environment to every Ghanaian, and we believe that destroying this forest will expose Ghanaians to significant environmental hardship,” Bosu adds. “We ask the court to uphold that constitutional right and request the government rehabilitate the degraded areas that have resulted from the illegal exploration done so far.”

A Rocha Ghana has also taken to social media with its conservation campaign, appealing to international audiences with the release of “Atewa Till Eternity,” a catchy rap song with pro-conservation lyrics and lush footage of the forest.

Concurrently, the group partnered with the local communities surrounding the forest to design strategies to help them adapt to the changing circumstances. This includes establishing community monitoring units, which helps residents report illegal activities to A Rocha Ghana, who in turn alert the police and urge officials to take action.

A Rocha Ghana also researched a path toward green development for the Atewa Forest, which proposes opportunities for sustainable energy and ecotourism over extractivism. “This is to help the government appreciate the green development opportunities that they could benefit from if they followed a sustainability pathway,” said Bosu. “There are better routes available for everyone. And there is definitely hope.”

A Rocha Ghana partners with Atewa’s local communities to advocate for their needs, amplify their voices, and ensure they are part of the solution to protect the forest now and for generations to come.

Despite the many risks of mining the Atewa Forest, the Ghanaian government continues to encourage extraction efforts. Some of this nods back to campaign promises made by President Akufo-Addo, whose hometown is near the forest: He pledged to open a bauxite mine there and create new jobs. But there is also intense pressure coming from international partners—not just the IMF and its $3 billion tab, but from the Chinese government, who, in 2018, provided Ghana with $2 billion for infrastructure development in exchange for access to 5% of the country’s bauxite reserves. China currently dominates global solar supply chains, and it operates mines in other parts of Ghana, but this new deal puts extra onus on bauxite because the Ghanaian government has said it plans to pay back the loan with the sale of it.

However, this plan is inherently flawed, according to Benjamin Boakye, executive director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy, an Accra-based research and advocacy nonprofit and Ford grantee. Before the agreement was signed, the center analyzed the $2 billion Chinese deal and discouraged the government from moving forward because it found Ghana’s bauxite wasn’t as lucrative as projected.  

“In our analysis, we showed the government that they were not going to make enough money from the bauxite extracted to pay back a $2 billion debt,” Boakye said. “They were going to have to find that money somewhere else in the budget, which could hurt Ghanaians. The other benefits Ghana was getting from the Atewa Forest were much higher than what the government was seeking to gain by exploiting bauxite.”

Bosu agrees. “The Atewa Forest has less than 20% of Ghana’s bauxite reserves, and our research shows that the bauxite deposit there is low grade. It’s not really of commercial value,” he said. “Our position has always been that, yes, we have bauxite, so let’s take advantage of it—but let’s do it properly, making sure environmental and social protections are in place, and recognizing that certain places in this country are no-go areas.”

Despite their opposition and obstacles, the advocates for the Atewa Forest’s preservation remain undeterred. Bosu, for one, is resolute—and he does not lose sight of why.

“The Atewa Forest was set up in honor of one of our traditional leaders, Nana Sir Ofori Atta I, who was a very strong advocate for land rights and protection,” Bosu said. “He said that we do not own the land, we borrow it from our children and our grandchildren. We need to make sure we leave it as it is for them.”

Featured Grantees

• A Rocha Ghana
• Africa Centre for Energy Policy
• University of Ghana

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Holding fast to our shared humanity

22 October 2023

• Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

With each passing day, my heart breaks anew.  

I grieve for the victims of Hamas’ terrorism and all of the suffering and trauma it has unleashed—for the more than 1,400 Jews and 5,000 Palestinians killed; for the more than 200 anguished families, anxiously awaiting word about their loved ones held hostage.

I grieve for the communities this crisis has displaced and upended, in Israel and around the world—for all those across the Jewish diaspora reckoning with the vile resurgence of antisemitism and the many victims of Islamophobia.

I grieve for the millions of innocent people—civilians, human beings—who yearn only for peace, but remain trapped in an escalating cycle of violence.

For me, one pressing question is: How can philanthropy make a difference?

I believe, especially in moments like these, that philanthropy must turn toward the pain and peril, not away from it. We must act with urgency and agility, in a way that catalyzes the good works of others.  And at the Ford Foundation, we are proud to provide grants to both Jewish- and Palestinian-led efforts—because the long road to relief, to rebuilding, to reconciliation of any kind begins with both peoples.

As ever, we are listening and learning with empathy and compassion. We are supporting those closest, most proximate, to the people and communities in greatest need. We are giving in collaboration—in true partnership—with the public and private sectors, other foundations, and many indispensable civil-society organizations, entrusting grantees with general support and empowering them to deploy resources most effectively.

Of course, some have cautioned that I—and the institution I lead—would be well advised to stay silent and stand pat.  As I’ve noted before, Henry Ford, our founder, was among the twentieth century’s most virulent American antisemites. And yet, to me, our past confers a special obligation to engage, not to retreat—no matter the complications or the consequences.

Ultimately, we all must hold fast to the promise of a future in which everyone can live in equality—with human dignity and human rights, with the freedoms and responsibilities of pluralist democracy. History teaches this will not come easy, nor on its own. But together we can and must help to build a just and lasting peace, worthy of our shared humanity.

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Ford Foundation responds to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza 

19 October 2023

• Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

This week, we are devastated and disheartened as we continue to learn more about the tragic events occurring in Gaza and their impact on the Palestinian and Israeli people. 

It is our hope that world leaders will continue to commit the resources needed to support immediate humanitarian relief efforts. And philanthropy must also respond. 

At the Ford Foundation, we are committed to principles of human rights and international law. We are steadfast in our pursuit of a world where all are able to live safely, with dignity and the full expression of their humanity. It is because of these beliefs that we cannot ignore the suffering, anguish, and pain that countless families are experiencing in Gaza at this moment. 

In response to this crisis, the Ford Foundation will support immediate humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza and the Middle East. Administered by our colleagues in the Middle East and North Africa regional office, the resources will go to partners in the region to provide life-saving support and other essential needs to the affected Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Beyond financial resources, this moment transcends borders and communities and requires a shared commitment to our collective humanity. We are witnessing a torrent of misinformation and polarizing commentary that fuels Islamophobia, antisemitism, and despair. We must reject these impulses and turn instead to compassion and our shared belief that we can create a just and peaceful world where all can flourish.

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How digital resilience advances safety and equality in the Global South

12 October 2023

• Ford Foundation

Getty / Instituto Nupef / CIPESA

In May 2017, when Javier Valdez Cárdenas met his mother and siblings for their weekly lunch in Culiacán, Mexico, they should have been celebrating good news: He had just learned that he was cancer-free after a thyroid issue. Instead, the award-winning journalist believed his life was in jeopardy. “I’m going to die,” he told them. Three days later, his prediction came true: Moments after exiting Ríodoce, the weekly newspaper he cofounded to report on drug cartels and organized crime, the 50-year-old was ambushed and shot a dozen times. The gunmen dragged him from his parked red Toyota Camry and left him dying, his signature Panama hat beside him. Then they escaped with his laptop, mobile phone, and files.

RASHIDE FRIAS | Getty

Valdez’s assassination and the theft of his files and devices put his colleagues in danger, and hinted at wider threats to digital safety in Mexico. An October 2022 report by Ford grantees SocialTIC, R3D, Article 19, and Citizen Lab found that over several years, journalists and human rights defenders in Mexico were targeted with a powerful spyware that can infiltrate smartphones and access their contents, transforming mobile devices into pocket-sized surveillance systems that track people in real time. 

Miguel Tovar/LatinContent | Getty Images

Since 2012, SocialTIC, a Mexico-based nonprofit, has empowered social justice organizations, civic actors, and journalists by providing them with the technical skills to understand and resist threats like spyware. At the same time, it also works to help organizations use tech for advocacy, strategic communications, and civic engagement. “Technology is evolving at a rapid-fire pace, and it shows no signs of slowing down,” said SocialTIC cofounder and CEO Juan Casanueva. He explained that the work is about achieving a delicate balance between the benefits and harms of tech. “There is enormous opportunity, but tech also poses grave threats, and we have felt that firsthand.” 

Spyware and surveillance technologies are growing because of a dearth of policies restricting their purchase and use and a growing lack of human rights protections in the Global South. “We were on the ground and very close to the problem,” said Casanueva. “For years we knew that something was downloading into those mobile phones, but we couldn’t diagnose it due to the complexities of this spyware. With international cooperation, we were ultimately able to identify the kind of spyware in use. Digital resilience is about capacity, and we need that in the Global South.” 

Increasing access for all

Further south in Brazil, there is growing concern that exclusion from technology is exacerbating inequality. Currently, 35 million people in Brazil cannot access the internet. The COVID-19 pandemic made clear that internet access is not a luxury—it’s a necessity worldwide. In northeastern Brazil’s Amazon region, many rural communities are under constant threat from outsiders burning the forest and using the cleared land for illegal mining, cattle grazing, and monocrop plantations. Activists and journalists reporting on human rights violations face grave risks. With the internet, Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities have protection: They can report attacks, sell their products, and organize. They can stay on their land and defend it.

Civil society organizations like Núcleo de Pesquizas, Estudios y Formación (Instituto Nupef) are supporting these communities to fight back. 

“Our goal is to build digital resilience,” explained Oona Castro, Instituto Nupef’s institutional development director. “That means creating an environment in which individuals and social justice organizations can work without fear of being attacked or discriminated against with technology.”

NUPEF

For quilombolas (Afro-Brazilian residents of quilombo settlements) and Indigenous communities who experience violence frequently, technology is critical to help them communicate incidents so they don’t suffer in silence. To address this need, Instituto Nupef manages an autonomous data center and provides web services and hosting to support social movements and civil society organizations. Instituto Nupef also leverages lower-tech solutions such as traditional radio and walkie-talkies for guardians of the forest to report threats and violence to a central hub, which then uses the internet to lodge complaints with the authorities. 

“It is not enough to simply install technologies in communities and then walk away,” said Castro. “What’s critical is to organize and empower the people who need technology the most, by supporting communities to understand how to install it themselves and find the greatest use of it for their own lives.” 

Spreading the word

Nearly 6000 miles from Brazil, the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) is also working toward safer information and communication technology (ICT). As CIPESA’s program manager Ashnah Kalemera sees it, digital resilience is essential for social justice movements in Africa. It allows them to expand their “understanding of online and offline security threats and have countermeasures in place to mitigate them,” explained Kalemera, “with the ultimate goal of improved governance, service delivery, transparency and accountability and human rights outcomes across the African continent.” 

Active for nearly two decades, the Kampala, Uganda-based organization CIPESA uses multiple strategies to create safer internet spaces. It raises awareness about threats to free speech and access to information, conducts research, convenes leaders across sectors to strategize how to protect and promote digital rights, and conducts strategic litigation. 

The organization also designs targeted interventions and disperses tools that respond to emerging privacy and data threats. At its annual Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica), for example, CIPESA runs help desks and clinics that provide support and training on digital security threats and tools. They also dispatch digital experts to remote regions. Ahead of the 2023 FIFAfrica conference, these experts spent much of September traveling across Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, covering thousands of kilometers to deliver digital security tips, information, and guidance. “Many human rights and social justice organizations have limited software and hardware skills,” said Kalemera of their boots-on-the-ground approach.

CIPESA

As African countries strengthen and grow their digital connectivity, CIPESA is mindful that people with disabilities must not be left behind. Its long commitment to this issue expanded during the pandemic, when it became clear that people with hearing and visual impairments could not obtain critical public health information. To build a more inclusive tech future, the organization produces evidence-based research on ICT and disability in Africa, centers disability rights issues in conversations about technology access and digital rights, and engages with telecom companies and regional agencies to ensure that they are building services accessible to all. 

A World Wide Web of digital resilience

SocialTIC, Instituto Nupef, and CIPESA are three of 10 organizations in the new Global Network for Social Justice and Digital Resilience. Supported by the Ford Foundation and launched at a side event at the UN Internet Governance Forum, the Network is a first-of-its-kind initiative to strengthen in-region centers of technical assistance across the Global South. These organizations equip local social justice groups with the skills, tools, and strategies needed to combat digital surveillance, censorship, and disinformation. Members will engage in South-to-South learning exchanges, transfer technical capacity to frontline civil society organizations, and work to diversify the field of technologists so it includes more leaders who are women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming and are people of color.  

Proximity is key: As digital threats to civil society continue to mount in the Global South, digital resilience organizations remain concentrated in the Global North. This leaves social justice advocates in the Global South without local or culturally appropriate technical support to address their specific digital threats and needs. 

“The Global South is disproportionately impacted by digital harms. Its people experience tech in one of two ways: It is weaponized against them or excludes them altogether. The result is increased polarization, compromised elections, and undermined democratic processes,” said Alberto Cerda Silva, program officer with Ford Foundation’s Technology and Society program. “In contrast, when social justice movements are allied with technical assistance organizations, a new forceful synthesis emerges. Frontline experience paired with technical expertise strengthens the march for progress and social justice across the Global South.” 

The Network’s mission is to achieve this progress both locally and globally. Its members are familiar with the Global South’s unique digital ecosystem, including the technology that predominates in lower- and middle-income countries, which is often not the same as in the Global North. Most people in the Global South, explained SocialTIC’s Casanueva, use Chinese devices and operating systems, as well as Android phones, which are less expensive than the Apple products popular in the Global North. “We have to convene people studying the specific technical challenges for the devices we use here,” he said. 

Kalemara agrees. “It’s impossible to overstate the need for a digital resilience network focused on the Global South. It promotes South-to-South peer learning and a chance to share experiences from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America,” she said. “The opportunity to share knowledge about opportunities and challenges excites us the most. We are grateful to have the chance to learn, reflect, and adapt with sister organizations.”

Featured Grantees

• SocialTIC A.C.
• NUPEF Institute – Nucleus for Research, Studies and Formation
• Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa

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On recent events in the Middle East

10 October 2023

• Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

I mourn the loss of innocent lives in Israel and Palestine and my prayers are with all those affected by the horrendous acts of terrorism committed by Hamas. We must reject all forms of violence and condemn the hate and aggression that have torn families and communities apart for too long. We cannot allow these acts to destroy our commitment to building a more just and peaceful Middle East and world.

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Keeping our commitment: second annual update on our pledge for tenure rights and forest guardianship of Indigenous Peoples

18 September 2023

• Ford Foundation

Today, we share our second annual update on our COP26 pledge to support the tenure rights and forest guardianship of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs & LCs). 

From June 30, 2022 to July 31, 2023, we approved $19 million in funding aligned with the goals of that pledge, in the form of new grants to the organizations listed below. In total, over the first half of the 5-year pledge, we approved $87 million in funding against our $100 million commitment. 

Our grants include direct support for the long-term resilience of organizations of and movements led by Indigenous people and local communities (IPs and LCs) around the world and for related efforts to strengthen tenure rights and governance. Our partners’ work reinforces our belief that there is no viable solution to the climate crisis without advancing the rights of IPs and LCs.

While we are pleased with this progress, we also know that there is more work to be done. The proportion of our pledge-aligned funding going directly to IP and LC organizations and networks over the past year was 24%, a modest improvement over the 17% we reported last year. This year, we also tracked the percentage of our funding that ultimately reaches IPs and LCs in ways they can influence and control, recognizing that many of our direct partners regrant funding to IP and LC organizations and networks. We estimate that at least half of our pledge-aligned funding ultimately reaches IPs and LCs. We hope these numbers will continue to increase. 

We continue to encourage all funders to increase their support for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Last year, we pledged to accelerate the transparent, accountable, and effective implementation of the IP and LC pledge by taking additional steps. We have made progress in these areas:

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Rejecting the rising tide of antisemitism

15 September 2023

• Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto/Getty

White nationalists and supremacists and neo Nazis surrounded and taunted counter protestors in Charlottesville.

Beginning tonight, millions of Jewish Americans will observe Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and then, ten days later, Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Together, these high holy days reflect a duality, even a paradox of progress: We cannot fulfill the promise of the new without first recognizing and seeking forgiveness for the pain of the old.  

For Americans of every faith, this timeless tradition might inform and inspire our journeys toward a collective tikkun olam—repair of our world.  Indeed, we cannot strive to mend without first acknowledging what is broken.  And among the wrongs we must make right, one specific sin that stains the conscience of our nation is the resurgent scourge of American antisemitism.   

Today, antisemitic bigotry is becoming more brazen—and dangerous. 

During the last five years, the Jewish-American community has endured a record number of hate crimes, a 35% increase between 2021 and 2022.  

This includes the horrific 2018 terrorist attack at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, of which American Jews are reminded every single Saturday as they walk past police officers posted at their synagogue doors—as well as the 2019 murders of Jewish people in Poway, California, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Monsey, New York.  Last year, another perpetrator took four people hostage during a Sabbath service at a temple in my home state of Texas. 

We hear the echoes of violence in the coded language and dog whistles of our conspiratorial and paranoid politics. We scroll through the onslaught of antisemitic expression up and down our social media feeds. We see it in the sinister insinuations about surnames like Soros and Rothschild. We sense its spread in the cancer of Holocaust denial, metastasizing online and off.

Antisemitism is among the oldest forms of hate. Its ongoing expression aggravates intergenerational trauma for a community that remains vulnerable—for a people who experience that vulnerability intensely, despite what some simplistically assume to be their full acceptance in mainstream American life. 

One might even draw a parallel between the Jewish communities of the United States today and those of Germany and Austria a century ago, who thought themselves assimilated into their home countries but were condemned as the “other.”  Through the 1920s, hundreds of thousands of people self-identified as German Jews, German first.  But as the next several decades unfolded, it became all too clear that the reality was the exact opposite: Their neighbors saw them only as Jews, who happened to reside in Germany. 

Brendan Smialowski/Getty

America’s history is rife with our own version of persecution and pogroms, entangling even those that our familiar stories anoint as heroes.  

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, for instance, simultaneously defended the “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way” while turning away Jewish asylum seekers through the 1930s.  The very ideology that they were fleeing manifested itself again in Charlottesville, where neo-Nazis brandished torches and chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

We can and must do better.  

We must look to the lessons of history, which affirm—as do the Jewish high holy days this week—that there can be no reconciliation without atonement, no justice without accountability.

I feel this obligation acutely as the leader of an institution that protects and promotes democratic values, which also was founded by Henry Ford—an icon of innovation, and industry, and philanthropy, and one of the twentieth century’s most virulent American antisemites.

Further, all of us engaged in building a fairer, more just America ought to embrace our responsibility to speak out about this ancient strain of inequality—this category of caste—exactly as we call out racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia. 

To paraphrase Pirkei Avot, a Rabbinic text on ethics, we are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it. 

Making amends for the sins of our past requires a fundamental reckoning. And the first step is rejecting indifference.

Let’s root out bias in our own actions and question the causes and concessions at the root of our inaction. Let’s condemn acts of explicit prejudice and find the will to challenge silence, as well. 

Ultimately, let’s regard solidarity not as a finite resource that we might somehow deplete, but rather as a muscle that we strengthen with use.

Reflecting on the last century, Elie Wiesel, a hero of mine, cautioned that “indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor, never his victim.” As we mark these high holy days, let us cast off our indifference—and forge a new beginning, with hope, worthy of the ideals we cherish.

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Fair play: Why centering gender is the only way to end inequality

9 August 2023

• Hilary Pennington, Executive Vice President of Programs
• Jessica Horn, Director, East Africa

Stephanie Keith/Darren Stewart/Gallo Images/Robert Natkin/Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Cory Clark/NurPhoto/Getty Images

In 2016, five star players from the United States women’s national soccer team decided they had had enough. They were tired of a system that did not value their hard work as much as it applauded and awarded soccer when played by men. For years, in fact, the women players had been paid significantly less than their counterparts on the men’s national team—even when they scored much bigger victories, including winning the 2015 World Cup. It was time to change the game. 

In a federal equal pay complaint, the five athletes said they were always paid thousands of dollars less than their male equivalents, no matter the competition or crowd size. In March 2019, after the U.S. men’s soccer team failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, 28 players from the women’s team filed a gender discrimination lawsuit over pay equity and working conditions. A federal judge dismissed parts of the lawsuit the next year, but the women’s team players ultimately secured a settlement even though U.S. Soccer was not obligated to provide one.  

In February 2022, after six years of litigation, the women finally had cause for celebration: U.S. Soccer announced that the men’s and women’s teams would be paid equally. Megan Rapinoe, the women’s team captain, called it a “huge win,” adding, “We are really in the midst of an incredible turning point in women’s sport.”

We celebrated this victory off the field and hoped it would create a ripple effect beyond athletics. After all, a growing body of research shows that everyone wins when we advance women’s rights, and a recent global study shows that both men and women are likely to live longer when a country makes strides toward gender equality.

Getty

Closing the gender pay gap in sports—and every other sector—is a powerful step forward. At the same time, we know it is just the beginning of a long, bumpy road toward solving inequality. No single measure will undo gender-based discrimination, which has more heads than Hydra. Pay parity in sports will not, for example, change the fact that gender stereotypes discourage girls from pursuing physical activity so that by the time they are teenagers, many decide that they don’t “belong” in sports. It will not change that there are double standards about sports uniforms as was evident when the Norwegian women’s beach handball team was fined after refusing to wear bikini bottoms while a Welsh Paralympian was told that her briefs were “too short and inappropriate.” It will not change that Black athletes like Serena Williams have endured horrific racism on the court nor will it prevent the media and international sports institutions from publicly subjecting athletes to invasive questions about their sex and gender, as was the case with champion runner Caster Semenya.

We believe gender equality is the unfinished business of the 21st century. The fight for equality is at a critical moment, with issues of gender at its core. We can no longer afford to look at gender in isolation when it’s actually woven into every aspect of inequality. The individuals and organizations we support at the Ford Foundation are making that all the more evident, emphasizing identity in their work and showing us that when it comes to social justice, no challenge is gender-neutral. If we really want to end inequality, we have to recognize that it is not created equal: Specific identities—with regard to race, religion, class, and disability—experience compounded oppression. We know, for example, that while many trans people fear for their safety, Black trans women in the U.S. are exponentially more vulnerable to violence. At the global level, women and girls with disabilities experience ten times more violence than those without disabilities. When compared to both men with disabilities and women without disabilities, women with disabilities are disproportionately excluded from the legal systems meant to protect them. 

The good news is that there is a solution. When we focus on gender-competent solutions in our programs and policies, we get at the root causes of inequality. Leading with gender early and upfront is more impactful than the status quo, which addresses gender inequality as an afterthought. 

Here at Ford, we haven’t always gotten this right, even though we’ve been investing in gender equality for almost 60 years. When we began this work in 1965, it was under the framework of women’s rights, which then expanded to LGBTQ+ rights. We funded instrumental players, from Planned Parenthood to Global Fund for Women. In 1975, we awarded future Nobel Laureate Wangari Mathaai with a travel grant to attend the first United Nations Women’s Conference in Copenhagen. Five years later, we supported the groundbreaking Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi, which affirmed that gender equality is integral to global peace and development. We’ve supported organizations focused on issues like education, economic empowerment, legal justice, and reproductive rights, but we didn’t always connect these issues to the root challenges of inequality. In 2015, when we shared our revised thinking and proposed integrating historically excluded populations into our programmatic work, rather than maintaining standalone programs, a number of our feminist colleagues were so incensed, they walked out of the room. They believed a mainstreaming approach would fall flat without a gendered analysis of power dynamics, accountability measures, and dedicated funds for intersectional gender work. They were right. 

We might, for example, resolve something concrete like pay inequity, but that wouldn’t change the patriarchal systems and culture that allowed it to happen in the first place. We needed to fully understand how gender shapes power—who has it and how it is wielded in public systems, the private sector, and domestic spheres—to consistently disadvantage women, girls, and gender-nonconforming people. These systems are, after all, the real foundation of discrimination, oppression, and violence.

Today, every single program team at the foundation is analyzing how power and gender dynamics play a role in their work and embedding those lessons in their strategies and grantmaking. And we are establishing a set of metrics that will help us monitor our progress and ensure the center holds so that our work can continue. Last but not least, we are putting our resources behind the rhetoric, with dedicated staff and funding at the team and institutional levels.

So what, exactly, does centering gender look like at Ford today? 

It’s spotlighting how large-scale extractives projects disproportionately affect women and girls in the Global South. This year, our grantee partner The SAGE Fund released “Building Power in Crisis: Women’s Responses to Extractivism,” a landscape analysis that documents how women and girls are affected by large-scale mining, drilling, and industrial agricultural production that is conducted without their consent. They experience increased caretaking responsibilities and struggle to grow crops on depleted land. They are subjected to extreme sexual violence and are targeted when they question or protest projects. Their reproductive and respiratory health suffer. And yet, despite such injustices, women in these regions are becoming powerful agents of change, building collaborative, autonomous communities where power is shared equally.

“Today, every single program team at the foundation is analyzing how power and gender dynamics play a role in their work and embedding those lessons in their strategies and grantmaking.”

Centering gender also means building blueprints to fix broken economic systems. In the United States, this means understanding that economic justice is inextricably tied to the care economy, a field dominated by women, people of color, and immigrants who are often unpaid or poorly compensated. Whether they take care of children, the elderly, or people with disabilities, caregivers make all other work possible and yet their labor is invisible and undervalued. 

This is why Ford came together with seven other funders to create the Care for All with Respect and Equity (CARE) Fund, a $50 million, multi-year investment to support a new care infrastructure of paid leave, publicly financed child care and early education, long-term services and support for older adults and people with disabilities, and high-quality jobs for all care workers.

It also means supporting individuals and institutions. Globally, we are resourcing feminist economists from NAWI Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective. These African women leaders are mobilizing women workers to claim their rights in labor markets that support national and global economies. Similarly, we support critical ecosystem-changing campaigns that produce protections for workers creating items we all use. Our grantee partners Asia Floor Wage Alliance and Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum led the Justice for Jeyasre campaign, which was launched following the sexual harassment and murder of garment manufacturing worker Jeyasre Kathiravel in Tamil Nadu, India. In April 2022, the campaign resulted in the groundbreaking Dindigul Agreement to Eliminate Gender-Based Violence and Harassment, which protects 5,000 garment workers and serves as a model for industry-wide change.    

“When we center gender, we disrupt dehumanizing forms of power and privilege and deepen our ability—individually and collectively—to advance justice.”

As we center gender across all of our programs, we are also working with partners to support a global gender justice movement that is under fierce attack. There is great urgency to this work. In just the past year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right to abortion that was enshrined 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, making a decision that has had devastating results. At the international level, a highly funded “anti-gender” movement is advancing punitive legislation against LGBTQ+ people and curtailing reproductive freedoms in the Global South. Gender-based violence is currently at epidemic levels. Each day seems to bring new threats to bodily autonomy, from pregnant people forced into childbirth to transgender people who are denied medical treatments or subject to violent attacks. Fortunately, there are many opportunities to support visionary leaders who are working, day in and day out, to fight for reproductive justice and ensure that it is inclusive, intersectional, and does not leave anyone behind. 

We are on a new journey here at Ford, and we are likely to make some wrong turns along the way. We promise to be candid about when this happens, but we do not want to miss this moment. Now is the time to bring creativity, agile thinking, diverse voices, and tactical wisdom to a long-overdue and much-needed conversation. We are inspired by the words of activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who famously said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” Today, we know that freedom for everyone requires gender equality. When we center gender, we disrupt dehumanizing forms of power and privilege and deepen our ability—individually and collectively—to advance justice. By reclaiming and exercising that power, we can see the connections we share and help all people—especially those who are multiply marginalized—live a life of dignity and agency.

Related Grantees

• International Planned Parenthood Federation-Worldwide, Inc.
• The Global Fund for Women
• Jobs with Justice Education Fund
• Tax Justice Network Africa Limited

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Need for speed: How affordable, accessible broadband internet disrupts inequality

18 July 2023

• Ford Foundation

GETTY / THE DETROIT COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY PROJECT

In 2020, during spring break of her senior year at Washington University in St. Louis, Mary Gay was told not to return to campus. The school’s chancellor informed its student body that, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, learning would shift online and commencement was canceled. It was shocking news, but then Gay heard another interrupted school story that put hers in perspective.

“There’s a Bond County, Illinois, town where the only reliable internet is at a veteran’s bar,” said Gay, who is currently completing a two-year fellowship with American Connection Corps, an organization that helps bridge the digital divide in heartland communities. “During the day, there would be 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds sitting at the bar doing their schoolwork in the same space where 70- and 80-year-olds were drinking. That’s just not a conducive learning environment.”

By mid-2020, there was no dearth of internet access horror stories. In eastern Arizona, Autumn Lee drove 45 minutes to the nearest McDonald’s to download lectures and class assignments from the University of New Mexico. Near Charlotte, North Carolina, author Beth Revis sat in her SUV and taught a two-hour evening writing class from a closed elementary school parking lot. In Los Angeles, special education elementary school teacher Jaime Lozano experienced endless internet outages.

Limited internet affected other sectors, too. A March 2022 study by University of Chicago researchers found that lack of internet access, which correlates with race, was a consistent high-risk factor for COVID death in both rural and urban areas.

Broadband as necessity, not luxury

Twenty months into the pandemic, the Biden Administration reached the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal. It acknowledged that broadband internet costs are prohibitive for many Americans and cited research from the Office for Economic Cooperation and Development stating that the United States has the second-highest broadband costs of 35 countries. The deal promised $65 billion to “help ensure that every American has access to reliable high-speed internet.”

One pandemic silver lining is that the connectivity conversation changed. “Broadband isn’t regulated like a utility, but it is as important as electricity,” said Gigi Sohn, long-time public interest advocate and former FCC senior staffer. “If you want to run a business, pay a parking ticket, operate a successful farm, check your finances, or get your kids to do their homework, you need it.” Before March 2020, she explained, there were still policymakers who labeled broadband a luxury and adamantly opposed its inclusion in the infrastructure bill. “That kind of nonsense is finally finished,” said Sohn. “Everyone knows broadband is a necessity if you want to be a full participant in modern society.”

DETROIT COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY PROJECT

The Detroit Community Technology Project provides low-cost, high-speed internet for Detroit’s underserved communities to increase digital literacy and empower residents to become digital stewards. Members seen here installing wireless antennas at residences in Detroit.

“This is the number one economic issue of our time,” said Angie Cooper, the executive vice president of the Ford-funded nonprofit Heartland Forward. The organization has a “heartland initiative” that ensures that American families have the tools to fully participate in the modern world—especially the internet. Cooper called the federal funding “fantastic” but said that communities need help understanding and navigating eligibility requirements. The White House’s $14 billion Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), reached in December 2021, is a case in point: It helps eligible households cut $30 per month off their internet bills. The problem is that it was initially offered online.

“A lot of people didn’t even know it existed,” said Cooper. In response, Heartland Forward bought billboard ads, ran radio spots, and sent out flyers to publicize ACP. Working with the League of United Latin American Citizens, the organization reached over 300,000 Hispanic homes.

Disrupting the digital divide

The U.S. Department of Commerce first recognized the digital divide in a 1995 paper. The agency wrote that the inequality in internet access impedes inclusive economic growth, particularly in Black communities. Today, the problem persists along the same racial lines. One analysis found that 40% of Black American households lack access to high-speed, fixed broadband. That figure drops to 28% for white American households.

People need proper digital training, said Christopher Mitchell, director of the community broadband networks initiative at The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a Ford grantee. “The organizations best equipped to do this work are the ones that are already in the community,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a rural area or an urban one. You cannot parachute in and expect that people will trust you.”

A self-described “dial-up baby,” Katie Hearn is director of the Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP), a Ford grantee that builds neighborhood-governed community wireless networks. Hearn was the first kid on her block to have a computer and AOL and has long noticed the disparity between people with internet access and those without it. Detroit, she said, was once one of the country’s worst-connected cities and a “poster child for digital redlining.” DCTP helped change that by training residents as community technologists, called digital stewards. They build and maintain digital networks and create solar-powered hotspots. Digital stewards also ensure that low-income households in Detroit— where the average median income is $26,249—can fully engage in all aspects of society. “We are transforming folks’ relationship with technology and also equipping them to become actual builders of the technology,” said Hearn.

Affordable, accessible, and available

Today, an estimated 42 million Americans have no access to broadband—and there is an unprecedented opportunity to change this. On June 26th, the Department of Commerce announced the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program: a $42.45 billion grant program to connect states, territories, and the District of Columbia with high-speed internet infrastructure. Two days later, we joined the Media Democracy Fund, Democracy Fund, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation to announce a philanthropic collaborative. The Digital Equity and Opportunity Initiative (DEOI) supports state broadband coalitions as they implement the federal funding. The first round of grants focuses on the rural South.

There is strong consensus that community ownership of networks is key to ending the digital divide. “We can’t default to a top-down situation and assume that the government and the corporate entities know best,” said Hearn. “If we do that, we’re just going to create a new flavor of the digital divide.” There is little incentive for for-profit internet service providers to guarantee prices or access. In contrast, community-owned networks “have a tendency to provide service at a much lower cost and make sure that everyone has high-speed internet,” said Sohn.

Whether it is through targeted, multi-funder collaboratives like the DEOI or other initiatives, foundations have a key role to play in the next five years. “We need philanthropy to stay involved,” said Mitchell. “Funders can make sure that high-quality internet access is affordable and that people have the training to actually use it.”

Related Grantees

• Heartland Forward, Inc.
• Allied Media Projects, Inc.
• Institute for Local Self-Reliance

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