- Nayakrishi Andolon (Bangladesh)
- Grameen Bank (Bangladesh)
- Landless Worker's Movement (Brazil)
- Research Foundation (India)
- GreenBelt Movement (Kenya)
- Center for Ecoliteracy (Berkeley, CA)
- The Garden Project (San Francisco, CA)
- TransFair USA (Oakland, CA)
- Emergency Grantees »
The Small Planet Fund makes annual grants to the organizations described below, providing stable long-term support for their work. You can also read about all of our grantees in our book, Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet.
In 2005, the Fund also began distributing small emergency grants ($500 to $5,000) for social change organizations around the globe at critical points in their projects. Past grants have gone to ViaCampesina tsunami rescue efforts and to support the MST and their march of rural workers to the capital of Brazil. Read more about emergency grantees.
Please note: Because of the nature of the Fund, we are unable to evaluate unsolicited grants.
A Story of What a Difference We’ve Made Together
Our 2007 grant to Vandana Shiva’s group Navdanya has helped it reverse a farmer suicide epidemic in India: In the last decade roughly 150,000 of that country’s farmers, trapped in debt because of dependency on purchased pesticides and seeds, have taken their own lives. With its Small Planet Fund grant, Navdanya was able to provide organic starter seeds and farming advice to persuade five hard-hit villages in central India to shed chemical farming and embrace organic methods and seed sharing—including giving up on disastrous genetically modified cotton. The villages are now celebrating their first organic harvests with fantastic results, Vandana reports, and in January 2008 they will hold a Festival of Hope. These villages are now inspiring countless others! Just imagine the life-changing ripples from the Fund’s relatively modest grants.
Nayakrishi Andolon (Bangladesh)
Nayakrishi Andolon (New Agricultural Movement) of Bangladesh is a movement for ecological agriculture. Based in the principle that observing and following the process of nature, Nayakrishi is working to promote and preserve indigenous farming practices and seeds. The initiative works with farmers to share ideas for natural pest- and soil-management techniques and other ecological farming practices such as mixed cropping and crop rotation. Among other programs, Nayakrishi runs a seed network that supports women in conserving seeds in their homes to be replanted year after year.
Learn more
Grameen Bank (Bangladesh) 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate
The Grameen Bank and its founder Muhammad Yunus are pioneers in the worldwide microcredit movement. Initially dismissed for his radical idea of creating a bank for the poor, Muhammad Yunus has recently received some of the highest international honors, including in 2006 the Nobel Peace Prize. Founded by Yunus in 1976, the Bank provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh, using social capital as collateral for those who have no monetary collateral. Since its founding, the Bank has loaned more than $6 billion and helped to lift millions of rural Bengalis out of poverty.
But Grameen is more than just a Bank. The Grameen “family” of business has grown to include phone companies and textile manufacturers and dozens of other initiatives. The Family of enterprises also promotes food security through home gardens and cultivation for sustenance.
Since our first year of giving, our grants have been used specifically for a scholarship program for daughters of Grameen Bank members who would otherwise not be able to afford schooling. Since 2002, we have helped send more than 100 girls through primary and secondary school.
Contact:
www.grameen-info.org
In the United States, contact: Grameen Foundation USA
Landless Worker's Movement-MST (Brazil)
The MST (for its acronym in Portuguese) is one of Latin America’s largest social movements. Founded in the mid-1980s, the MST is helping make a constitutional right a reality: The Brazilian constitution guarantees that land be ‘serving a social function’ and if it’s not allows for the ‘expropriation’ of the land. But in a country with one of the world’s biggest disparities in wealth, much of the land is held by some of the wealthiest in the country and is, indeed, idle. By helping identify and then settle landless families on this idle land through civil disobedience, advocacy, and legal strategies, the MST has created new communities in nearly every single Brazilian state. To date, more than 250,000 families have been settled on formerly idle land. In the process, the MST has reduced infant mortality, malnutrition, and joblessness within its settlements. The MST is also an active promoter of cooperatives and organic farming and launched the country’s first organic seed line.
Contact:
www.mstbrazil.org
In the United States, contact Friends of the MST at info@mstbrazil.org
Navdanya Farmers Network and the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology (India)
Gutsy critic of the false promises of chemical farming and genetically modified seeds, scientist Dr. Vandana Shiva and her Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology are helping to protect indigenous Indian agricultural knowledge in the face of growing corporate monopolization of seeds and intellectual property rights. Founded in 1982, RFSTE, works on bio-diversity conservation and protecting people's rights from threats to their livelihoods and environment. The Navdanya Network is a program of the Foundation to support farmers throughout the country in conservation and organic farming techniques.
Contact:
www.navdanya.org
The Green Belt Movement (Kenya) 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate
The Green Belt Movement was founded in 1977 by Kenyan environmental, Dr. Wangari Maathai. Building a movement of grassroots, village-based and women-run nurseries, the Green Belt Movement has succeeded in planting more than 30 million trees to avert desertification in Kenya. With the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, the Movement received international recognition for its visionary work in environmental conservation and community development and has expanded its programs to promote similar efforts internationally.
Contact:
www.greenbeltmovement.org
Center for Ecoliteracy (Berkeley,CA)
The Center for Ecoliteracy was founded in 1995 by Fritjof Capra, Peter Buckley, and Zenobia Barlow. The Center for Ecoliteracy is a public foundation that supports a grantmaking program for educational organizations and school communities, primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area; convenes networks of its grantees; sponsors projects consistent with its mission; administers donor-advised funds; and manages a publishing imprint, Learning in the Real World.
Contact:
www.ecoliteracy.org
The Garden Project (San Francisco, CA)
In 1992, The Garden Project was founded with a mission unlike any organization in the country: to provide job training and support to former offenders through counseling and assistance in continuing education, while also impacting the communities from which they come. Today, The Garden Project continues this mission – innovatively empowering both former offenders and at-risk youth through training and education while transforming the urban environment. The Garden Project model for community change is an integrated, community-wide, systemic response to crime, high rates of recidivism, and unemployment which links crime and poverty with stewardship of the environment and the community. The United States Department of Agriculture hailed The Garden Project as “one of the most innovative and successful community-based crime prevention programs in the country.”
Contact:
www.gardenproject.org
TransFair USA (Oakland, CA)
TransFair USA is the only third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States, auditing transactions between US companies and international suppliers from whom they source fair-trade certified products, in order to guarantee that farmers and farm workers behind the goods were paid a fair, above-market price.
Since TransFair USA opened its doors in late 1998 and began certifying Fair Trade coffee in 1999, fair-trade certified coffee has become the fastest-growing segment of the US specialty coffee market.
In the past six years, TransFair USA has leveraged limited resources to certify 74.2 million pounds of Fair Trade coffee. This has provided coffee farmers in some of the poorest communities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia with over $60 million more than they would have earned selling their harvests to local intermediaries. And Fair Trade in the US is no longer just about coffee: TransFair has also introduced Fair Trade Certified tea, cocoa, fresh fruit, and, most recently, rice and sugar to the US market.
Contact:
www.transfairusa.org