Yeshica Weerasekera, Africa Director, IDEX
IDEX’s Yeshica Weerasekera and Tim Little of the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment were interviewed on KPFA in Berkeley on the Terra Verde show yesterday by Adrienne Fitch-Frankel.
Below are a few of the highlights from the show’s discussion on the “art and science of environmental grantmaking” in California and around the world.
Have a listen:
On intersectionality:
“We focus on food sovereignty, climate resiliency and building alternative economies because..the problems faced by communities cannot be separated out into compartments. Women, youth, and indigenous communities contribute the least to large-scale global problems, and yet they are often the most impacted by them.”
On Biowatch‘s court battle against Monsanto in South Africa:
“They were really in a David and Goliath situation. They were really risking everything…it was a make or break situation. We were able to step in and support them because we were making small grants and we knew that everything made a huge difference to them. It was a risk, but we now have a thriving partnership.”
On the challenges grassroots groups face in accessing funding:
“A lot of the philanthropic dollars and aid that goes to this countries never reach the grassroots. There are lots of layers of institutions that take pieces of those resources. The popular model still is top-down solutions.”
“Communities have the ideas, sometimes they lack the capacity. In many places, the political and economic situation is very, very difficult…and application processes are very formal. And often times it means a lot of costs for them, precious resources to get to a major city [and] access internet to get these sources of funding.”
On managing resources at the grassroots:
“People at the grassroots use resources very, very well. They’re very careful with the small resources that they have and they are very accountable. They may lack how to manage, do the accounting, and this is where community-based organizations with the knowledge and the experience and the skills can come in and help support them.
On the “monitoring and evaluation” trend:
“People want to see the impact of their dollars, but we’re presenting numbers without telling the stories of people’s lives.”
“The groups that we work with, [they] are going into communities…to change some really deep-seated problems and it can’t be reduced. It’s not a simple solution. Now sometimes you can provide food or do one-off actions that help temporarily, but what is getting at the root of the problem is something that is very hard to measure.”
On the push for results and vanity metrics:
“It puts a burden on community groups to [provide] what’s needed for the funder to prove the impact of their dollars. So it takes away from the real work of running the programs and it stretches the resources on the ground. There’s this incredible pressure on partners to deliver numbers, but not really reflecting [on] the deeper change.
“It’s not what you put on a dashboard. Social change is complex and holistic…it’s messy and it’s long-term.”
Why invest in organizations that provide small grants:
“We’ve been around for 30 years…we know how to get the resources to smaller groups effectively. I would support groups like the Rose Foundation and IDEX that really have a thoughtful process to reach the groups that need the resources most.”