2025 Top 10 Legado Moments
2025 was a year when 360° Community-Led Change mattered more than ever. And for Legado and our partners, that made the call for Thriving Futures even stronger. As a result, in 2025, we deepened our relationships with current partners and laid the foundation to expand our partnerships in the year to come. Most importantly, in a tumultuous year in the international action sector, we saw dozens of communities taking the lead on building their own Thriving Futures.
Here are our Top 10 highlights from the year:
1. Communities’ self-determination continued to prevail.
Our top highlight of the year is an easy one: seeing Indigenous and local communities continue to pursue their own legacies. Nothing could have prepared us for the challenges of 2025. But at Legado, we focus on community strengths and assets. From Indonesia to Kenya, from Mozambique to Peru, we saw communities band together to achieve their priorities—on their terms. The result? Thriving Futures for both people and the environment.
Community members in Mount Namuli, Mozambique, work in the community nursery to grow native plant seedlings | Legado
2. Our latest film celebrated the Gully Mamas—leaders in advancing holistic change
In November, we released a new 5-minute film celebrating the “Gully Mamas.” These Samburu women are taking the charge towards building a Thriving Future – one where their children’s education, their livelihoods, and their environment can flourish together. Shot by Tanzanian videographer Roshni Lodhia, this film showcases women leading a new era of 360° Community-Led Change in Northern Kenya.
3. Legacy Planning began in Indonesia.
This spring, Legado and our partner Planet Indonesia began the Thriving Futures process with villages in and around the Gunung Naning Forest, in the Melawi District of West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. Legado team members joined Planet Indonesia in Ganjang village to help build spaces for community members to reflect on their community assets and to develop a shared vision for the future. This is our first partnership in Southeast Asia and brought Thriving Futures to a new continent!
A woman from Indonesian Borneo maps her past and present, and the legacy she wants to see for her future | Raisa Mirza/Legado
4. We partnered with 116 communities to advance Thriving Futures.
Because Thriving Futures supports these communities on their own terms, the resulting richness can be missed in standardized indicators. So we developed an Impact Tree for each partnership to tell each community’s Thriving Futures’ story and demonstrate their holistic impact. Each tree illustrates how the activities and priorities of community members lead to holistic, sustainable results.
Saniriato’s Impact Tree. Learn more about Impact Trees here.
5. The Saniriato community launched their first Legacy Plan.
In Saniriato, Peru, Legado’s first partnership in Latin America, the community celebrated the completion of their Intercultural Community Legacy Plan in early 2025. With their Legacy Plan in place, the community is ready to implement their priorities and make their Thriving Future a reality.
Amilcar Huamani Gonzáles maps out his vision for Saniriato’s past, present, and future, as part of the Thriving Futures Process that led to the community’s first Legacy Plan in 2025 | H. Michell Leon/Legado
6. Thriving Futures grew across our core partnership sites.
Across our partnerships, communities are taking collective action built on their own self-determined priorities. On Mount Namuli, Mozambique, this looked like local people operating native plant nurseries, leading savings groups, and spearheading regional partnerships to run mobile health brigades. In Ngilai, Northern Kenya, this looked like local leaders protecting water sources, running a traditional maternity shelter, and implementing resilient grazing plans that protect native growth. And much, much more.
Elder Leadekei, a local community leader in Ngilai, Kenya, is a champion for increasing access to clean water for his people—a key part of Ngilai’s Thriving Future | Roshni Lodhia/Legado
8. We aligned Legado’s internal compass with Thriving Futures
By basing our organizational culture on the interconnected principles that form the foundation of the Thriving Futures Process – a new strategy for our growing team – both our internal and external processes now have integrated frameworks to support our team, program, and partnership success as we grow.7. We laid the groundwork for new partnerships in Kenya, South Africa, Australia, Honduras and more.
Our team worked to nurture new partnerships in areas of high biodiversity where Thriving Futures could make a significant difference for communities and landscapes. This included four in-person “calibration visits” in Africa and Australia with potential partners. It has been a huge privilege to learn with and from other organizations. Each potential partner has shared that they see the Thriving Futures Process as having the potential to strengthen and deepen their work with communities.9. We championed holistic, community-led change at Climate Week and Skoll.
Through panels and partnerships, we were able to advocate for holistic processes for change. Events like Rooted and Rising, co-hosted with Tostan and the Full Spectrum Coalition, were powerful forums to facilitate cross-sector conversations on Holistic, Community-Led Development.
10. We deepened our community of support.
New funders, new partners, new friends = new support for this critical work. This year, as far too many organizations have closed their doors or scaled back drastically, our community of support has enabled Legado to continue to support self-determination in communities in a way that leads to Thriving Futures for both people and the environment.
A portrait of a Samburu woman, one of those known as Gully Mamas who have come together to heal the eroded gullies of the Ngilai Community Conservancy, Kenya | Roshni Lodhia/Legado