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Thriving Futures Community

Legado Annual Report 2023

Our 360° Community-Led Approach to Creating Thriving Futures

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Dear Friends & Supporters,

2023 was another incredible year of co-creating Thriving Futures with local communities around the world.

In three regions crucial for biodiversity, we worked alongside partners to facilitate sustainable, community-led change that benefits people’s lives and the land they call home.

A highlight of the year was advancing our newest partnerships in Peru, laying the groundwork with Indigenous communities to begin articulating their own vision for their self-determined personal and community legacies. We also supported incredible collective action in Kenya and Mozambique, as communities came together to enact their community priorities.

This year, we also made an effort to articulate one of the key values at the core of how we help achieve Thriving Futures, and we’re excited to share it with you. We call it being 360° Community-Led, and it surrounds every step of our Thriving Futures process:

  • 360°: Our community partners think about every dimension of their lives when they create their Legacy Plan. They define priorities related to their health, their education, the environment, local governance, livelihoods, and so much more—everyone and everything comes together to create a Thriving Future.
  • Community-Led: When change is truly community-led, it’s not just the powerful or connected who get a chance to speak up. Every member of the community, particularly women, youth, and the elderly, gets to play a role in creating their Thriving Future.
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The Florecita captures the intersecting importance of each of the dimensions of well-being required to create a holistic Thriving Future.

We invite you to read through this year’s Annual Report to learn more about how we supported 360° Community-Led Change across our work, whether on Mount Namuli, in Peru’s Cordillera Vilcabamba, or in Kenya’s Matthews range.

This local work is made possible by the incredible support of our global community. Thank you for your support of our journey to co-create Thriving Futures in places critical for biodiversity.

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Majka Burhardt
Executive Director and Founder

Our Impact

Legado’s Thriving Future process honors the power and right of Indigenous Peoples & local communities to develop and implement sustainable solutions that are relevant to the challenges they face, leading to results like this:

484,100

hectares of critical ecosystems under Indigenous and local stewardship supported by our programs
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93%

of community members who went through Thriving Future programming feel strongly united with their community

87

participating communities
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91%

of convening attendees who say their participation in community activities has increased

6

partners using the Legado model
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66

community-identified priorities in process

86,000

lives impacted
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    O Nossa

    Legado é Namuli film

    In early 2023, we released O Nossa Legado é Namuli (Our Legacy is Namuli), our newest film showcasing the power of Namuli’s Lomwe people and their mountain home, which serves as a resource to the world. The film was made in collaboration with the Namuli communities and Nitidae and shot and produced by Tanzanian filmmaker Roshni Lodhia.

    360° Community-Led

    Change Around
    the World

    At Legado, we work alongside Indigenous Peoples & local communities in places important for biodiversity to support 360° Community-Led Change that benefits people and the places they call home. We partner with local communities to ensure they have the tools, resources, and partnerships to design and implement solutions of their choosing that benefit both their communities and landscapes—an outcome we call Thriving Futures.

    Explore the slide deck for a deep dive into what 360° Community-Led Change looks like in practice.

    Where We Work

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    Thriving Futures in 2023

    Our Programs Up Close

    In each of our program areas, we partner with Indigenous Peoples & local communities (IP&LCs) to co-create Thriving Futures that center on a community's own priorities for implementing their self-defined legacies.

    We do this through by engaging a diverse group of local people in our Thriving Futures process:

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    Each of our partnerships are at a different stage of this co-creation process. Learn more about how the Thriving Futures process is being enacted in each of our partnership updates below.
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    Legado: Namuli

    Mozambique

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    Legado:Namuli is Legado's flagship program working with the Lomwe communities encircling Mount Namuli, Mozambique — a key biodiversity area.
    Legado:Namuli is Legado’s flagship program working with the Lomwe communities encircling Mount Namuli, Mozambique, a key biodiversity area. Namuli is where, in 2014, we began with a hard-earned $11,000 and a passionate international team of social scientists, biologists, and more. Since then our Legado:Namuli team has worked with eight communities and 24,000 people on the mountain to realize the legacies they have defined.

    Program launch: 2014/2022
    Current Program Partner:
    Namuli Wiwanana

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    Stage in the Thriving Futures process

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    “In 2023, Legado's work in Mozambique was intense at the community level, with over 26 community convenings and weekly accompaniment meetings. We can see the impacts: a group of people coming together to lead activities, ones that previously seemed impossible to carry out with local strengths and talents, is emerging. This group is co-leading the construction of the first Health Center in the Mucunha community, which will serve the 24,000 people who live around Namuli.

    One thing that makes me proud of our work is that by co-creating such plans with communities, our team has been able to support them and advocate for their challenges and priorities to partners who can help. For instance, villages that previously didn’t have a community health worker, due to a lack of knowledge on the part of the District Health Directorate, can now count on these professionals to meet the community’s basic health needs. I can’t wait to continue this journey together in 2024!”

    - Kassia Macassa, Legado Assistant Coordinator & Program Deputy Lead

    Legado:Namuli’s 2023

    Thriving Future Highlights

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    January - April

    Across nine villages, the Mucunha community mapped their strengths, challenges, and priorities. Each village also elected two representatives to champion the work and implement their priorities.
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    May

    The Mucunha community convened in the town of Gurué to select their top three priorities and begin to define action plans to implement these priorities in 2023-2024. All collective action the community took this year was based on these priorities.

    See DEEP DIVE below.

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    “Our community convening was very important. It brought together our group of promotores (community teams), leaders, and other important people in our community. Now we feel we are making progress toward our community priorities. The most important thing we spoke about for me was how to improve the health of our community through the construction of a local health clinic [and other community-level actions].”
    - Felizardo Muroque, Niwiri Village, Mucunha community
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    May

    The Mucunha community completed its community-designed crest. The phrase “Elapo ya Wanamukuna” means “Community of Mucunha,” and each element was chosen to represent the people of Mucunha and their shared priorities for their community and their land.
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    July

    Mucunha broke ground on its first ever health center as it began to take collective action on different activities in the initial stages of its work plan. The new health center is part of enacting their community-identified health priority, and will provide health care to more than 24,000 people in the region.
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    “When a woman is pregnant, it is a great joy in the family. However as her pregnancy progresses and the due date gets closer, tension and worry grow as there are very few options to assist women who have a difficult labor. Sometimes babies die, or mothers die, or both and there’s little we can do. The new health center will help us [traditional birth attendants] to support more women to deliver healthy babies safely.”
    - Lina Mussa, traditional birth attendant from Mucopo village in Mucunha
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    “For us to have our vision and plan to build a local health clinic supported by Namuli Wiwanana, Legado, and our government is a very big deal. If I made it to this age, it is solely because of our medicinal plants and the grace of God, I’ve known no vaccines nor any other type of medicine growing up. If this health clinic wasn’t here for me, at least it will be for my kids. Now I feel we are not invisible anymore.”
    - Celestino Alverca, elected by his community to integrate the Community Team of Mucunha
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    June

    In their Legacy Plan toward improving community health, Mucuhna decided to include the launch of a new program to restore native trees in places important for traditional medicine and forest ecology—one of the many additional ways their health priority manifests 360° across their range of interconnected priorities.
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    “A health center in Mucunha is a goal the people of Mucunha have had for many generations and, because it seemed impossible to do, they always expected an outside entity to build it. However, by creating the opportunity for everyone in the community to join and participate in this process with their strengths and talents, we amplify the community’s sense of power, autonomy, and sovereignty.”
    - Filipa Oitaven, Legado Senior Program Manager, Mozambique
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    January - September

    Across 13 villages, the Murrabué community mapped their strengths, challenges, and priorities. Each village also elected two representatives to champion the work and implement the priorities.
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    November

    The Murrabué community convened in the town of Gurué to select their top three community priorities. Together, they finalized their Legacy Plan and defined action plans to implement these priorities in 2024. They have also completed their community-designed crest.
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    December

    The team conducted in-depth interviews with members of the Mucunha and Murrabué communities to gain insight on household economies around Mount Namuli. The result of this work will be the creation of the Village Savings and Loans Associations, a new livelihoods support program that will launch in 2024.
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      Nkishon Supat e Ngilai

      Kenya

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      Nkishon Supat e Ngilai, which translates from Samburu to “Ngilai’s Thriving Future,” is a project created in collaboration between the Ngilai Community, Legado, the Ngilai Wildlife Community Conservancy, and Northern Rangelands Trust. The Conservancy is home to more than 11,000 primarily Samburu people and contains the core of the Mathews Range—a spiritual home of the Samburu, a key source of water for the surrounding valleys, and the core grazing area that supports the livelihoods of its stewards.

      Program launch: 2020
      Current Program Partner:
      Ngilai Community Conservancy
      Northern Rangelands Trust

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      Stage in the Thriving Futures process

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      “I joined Legado earlier this year. The Legacy approach inspired me when I realized how it is a positive shift away from a siloed approach to a 360° holistic one. I love how Legado emphasizes leveraging community assets over needs and involving empowering communities to lead the change.

      Since this realization, I’ve felt grateful for the meaningful work we are undertaking in Northern Kenya and the inspiring individuals I’ve encountered. To illustrate, over 600 community members have come to our conevenings for the Ngilai Community Wildlife Conservancy since July alone! Together, they are shaping their community priorities and leading the development of a comprehensive five-year Community Conservancy Plan. This process is supported by Legado in partnership with Northern Rangelands Trust to guide this transformative process.

      The progress in Northern Kenya is truly exciting, and I am excited to see what the future holds for Ngilai Community Wildlife Conservancy and their five-year community Legacy Management Plan, buoyed by community priorities from over 25 community meetings in the past months.”

      - Walter Lolusu Lenolngenje, NRT/Legado Thriving Future Program Coordinator

      Nkishon Supat e Ngilai’s 2023

      Thriving Future Highlights

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      May

      The Ngilai community completed their first maternity shelter, furthering their goal to integrate traditional Samburu medicinal practices into existing health infrastructure (you can read a full update on the maternity shelter here). Since opening, the community has seen a noticeable increase in safer hospital births and healthier families.
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      June

      Ngilai advanced their rangelands priority by creating a plan to expand engagement in their dry season grazing planning processes. The plan sets intentions to include more voices, learn from their neighbors, and plan for rangeland management beyond their borders.
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      “This way of talking about our community, our conservancy, and the good legacy we want is good because it gives us the know-how and opportunity to talk about what we want for [our] future in our plan.”
      - Sirei Lentukunye, Ndikir Village, Ngilai Wildlife Community Conservancy
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      “I am a leader because I also play a role in choosing my leader to represent me and following up with them to make sure that our voices through this plan are heard. This is not only for my benefit but for all and generations to come.”
      - Sayaro Lenairerei, Murit Zone, Ngilai CCY
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      July

      Community members chose the maternity shelter as a location for a vegetable garden project because a core group visits and maintains it each week. This simple addition to the community has contributed to a sense of individual well-being for families and an increased sense of community cohesion as community members come together to tend the garden.
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      “Through the Thriving Futures process, our community identified solarization of Ngilai dispensary as a priority. When we received carbon funds for the year 2023, we allocated some for this priority and the community was happy. When defining the Community Conservancy Legacy Management Plan, we identified more priorities such as repairing the dispensary fence, building classes, drilling boreholes, strengthening representation, and information sharing—just to mention a few. We look forward to achieving these priorities using the next disbursement of carbon funds and other sources of income within the conservancy.”
      - Patrick Lolokuria, Nurse in charge Ngilai Health center, Board member Lemeleny Zone, Ngilai CCY
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      August

      Ngilai began the process to integrate their Legacy Plan into their Conservancy’s Management and Development Plan, which is critical for ensuring that funds from a major carbon-sequestration program will be directed to Ngilai’s community-designed Thriving Future priorities.
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      “I have been in trainings and meetings before with many organizations, but we only talk of one thing, let us say health or even our land. But in this meeting with Legado we talked about everything and saw each item as something which can together achieve a Thriving Future. In two days, we have spoken about our culture, governance, health, and even the health of our environment, together with so many other things. This is the first meeting with an organization where we have spoken about culture as something that is key. Our culture was getting lost but now, through this process, we can see the importance of culture and how it fits in all these different things we have been speaking about.”
      - Peter Leakayo, Warrior, Lmarmaroi Zone
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      November - December

      After the completion of the maternity shelter, the community began using new funding to provide maternity kits for families of newborns—their next community-defined action toward fulfilling their health priority.
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      December

      Ngilai moved forward with their Conservancy Legacy Management Plan. The community finalized work that began in August and will be enacted in early 2024. Having the Ngilai Community Legacy Plan drive how communities make decisions, spend funds, and create partnerships is a key outcome of Legado’s process to center local voices.
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        Futuros Vivos:Megantoni-Machiguenga

        Peru

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        Photo by Edut Florez.

        Futuros Vivos:Megantoni-Machiguenga is a collaboration to co-create Thriving Futures with the Indigenous Peoples and local communities stewarding Peru’s Megantoni National Sanctuary and Machiguenga Communal Reserve. The program is a multi-year partnership to support the co-creation of Thriving Futures with Indigenous Peoples of the Asháninkas, Matsigenkas, Yine Yami, Quechua, and Kakinte, as well as surrounding local communities—key stewards of Andes-Amazon.

        Program launch: 2022
        Current Program Partner:
        The Machiguenga Communal Reserve, National Service Of Natural Areas Protected By The State (SERNANP) and ECA Maeni, the Indigenous co-management entity of the Machiguenga Communal Reserve

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        The Megantoni National Sanctuary National Service Of Natural Areas Protected By The State (SERNANP)

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        Stage in the Thriving Futures process

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        “This first full year with Futuros Vivos: Megantoni-Machiguenga partnership has been one of learning and inspiration. I had the privilege to share and learn about many people’s personal legacies and help them plan how to achieve their visions for their future. I also had the opportunity to continue planning and coordinating with our partners to co-create the roadmap and work plan for the overall program so that community priorities are 360° Community-Led. I am motivated and ready to continue working with our partners and communities, creating lasting partnerships for the implementation of community priorities and achieving a Thriving Future.”

        - Ana Fernandez, Futuros Vivos: Megantoni-Machiguenga Program Coordinator

        Futuros Vivos’ 2023

        Thriving Future Highlights

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        April

        We expanded our partnerships in Peru to include Indigenous Peoples and local communities stewarding the Megantoni National Sanctuary alongside the Machiguenga Communal Reserve.
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        “I feel a great responsibility to work towards the Thriving Future of the communities and people I represent. Each community is different, and the Futuros Vivos: Megantoni-Machiguenga initiative has provided me the opportunity to better understand the priorities of the communities as defined by them. This is my personal legacy as a leader.”
        - Don Jose Kaibi, Vice-President of Indigenous federation COMARU and the President of the Unified Management Committee (CGU) of the Machiguenga Communal Reserve (MCR) and Megantoni National Sanctuary (MNS)
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        June

        Our team carried out our first Legacy workshop where partners and collaborators had the opportunity to learn more about and reflect on their personal legacies and inspire each other into action. We laid the groundwork to begin the Legacy Planning process with partner local communities, which will give communities the opportunity to articulate their vision for their future and priorities.

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        “The process to develop and implement Community Legacy Plans empowers individuals to guide their community toward real, self-defined development based on community assets and relationships. As co-managers along with our neighboring communities of the communal reserve and national sanctuary, Community Legacy Plans are crucial to our decision-making process and planning, as they contain the communities’ visions and priorities for their territory and landscape."
        - Cesar Aliaga, Director of Megantoni National Sanctuary
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        October

        We signed a Memorandum of Understanding between Legado and SERNANP (Peru’s National Service of Natural Protected Areas). This agreement opens up the possibility for Legado to work in other protected areas in Peru. It also reaffirms SERNANP’s commitment to support the co-creation of Thriving Futures for Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

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        December

        Our team participated in the second National Convening of “Community Life Plans,” held in Quillabamba, Peru. Legado’s Legacy Plans build on the Peruvian Planes de Vida (Life Plans) by bringing a larger and more diverse group of community members into the planning process, grounding the work in personal and community legacy, and supporting communities as they implement solutions.
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          Community Priorities:

          A Holistic, Inclusive
          Approach to Thriving Futures

          So often when we talk about a community’s self-identified priority, it gets distilled to one word, like “health” or “education.” In reality, communities spend months convening together, defining their personal and communal legacies, and listening to diverse voices to craft holistically developed priorities that consider all aspects of people’s well-being, including the health of both the land and people, education, culture, livelihoods, and systems of governance.
          Here’s what that looks like in practice. In May 2023, after months of convening, the Mucunha community on Mount Namuli gathered to finalize their first Community Legacy Plan with Namuli communities and articulated the following priorities:
          Priority 1: “To improve the health of our community through the construction of our first local health clinic and the training of new community health workers in villages where there are none, alongside the preservation of traditional medicinal plants and trees through conserving forests.”
          Priority 2: “To improve the education of our children through increasing classrooms for secondary education, improving the coordination between school board and leadership for better management of school funds, and creating the necessary conditions to accommodate teachers and keeping our children in school throughout the year.”
          Priority 3: “To rehabilitate community roads as a way to improve communities’ access to markets and services, and to advance livelihood and savings opportunities, as well as to support the other two priorities and communities overall development (because the construction of the health center and classrooms at the school, the attendance of the teachers, the transfer of critically ill patients to the hospital and our commerce all depend on it).”
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          Now that they are articulated, the community is working together to implement these priorities following their own planning and execution process. The concrete work of building a health center and preserving native plants flows directly from these priorities.
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          Activism and

          Community Leadership

          In 2023, we increased Legado's visibility to ensure that our work partnering with Indigenous Peoples & local communities to promote Thriving Futures continues and grows.

          Unearthodox inquiry:

          The Future of Philanthropy and Biodiversity

          Tita Alvira, our Chief Partnerships and Programs Officer, contributed to a major collaborative inquiry from Unearthodox. The inquiry explores the evolution of global philanthropy and its relationship to biodiversity and conservation. It ends with Tita’s call to action to empower the recipients of philanthropy to become active decision-makers in regard to their priorities and definition of a Thriving Future.
          The Philanthropy Workshop featured Legado as one of four standout groups working in climate justice globally at their first-ever marketplace event, hosting a presentation by Tita Alvira, Chief Partnerships and Programs Officer, and Majka Burhardt, Executive Director.
          Anne-Marie Slaughter, former United States Director of Policy Planning and CEO of New America, interviewed Executive Director Majka Buhardt about career, motherhood, and global change-making.
          Watch It Here
          Read corresponding articles in Fortune and Business Insider that share Legado’s journey to climate justice.
          Legado supported the creation of the Community Led Impact Coalition, an international group of organizations working to make an equitable and inclusive, community-led process the driver of holistic change that supports thriving people in thriving places. Stay tuned for more to come in 2024.
          A team from The Bridgespan Group visited Legado’s Ngilai partnership in Northern Kenya in early September as part of an ongoing knowledge exchange for their Community-Driven Change Initiative. They will be profiling Legado inside a forthcoming report.
          We gathered with you all by hosting our fourth virtual Town Hall. Supporters, friends, and collaborators from around the globe joined the event to get the latest updates from our team and ask questions live.
          Watch It Here
          We teamed up with Pilot House for an in-person Boston event to discuss 360° Community Led change, why it matters, and how we do it.
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          Legacy Expedition:

          Peru 2023

          In May 2023, six Legado community members joined us for a journey to Peru’s Machigenga Communal Reserve and Megantoni National Sanctuary to be part of our newest program working in partnership with the Indigenous Peoples of the Asháninkas, Matsigenkas, Yine Yami, Quechua, and Kakinte, key stewards of Andes Amazon.

          As part of the trip, participants supported one of Legado’s Community Legacy Workshops, working alongside local people to define personal and community legacies. The group ended its time together with a capstone journey to Machu Picchu.

          Interested in joining a Legacy Expedition and participating in Legado’s work co-creating Thriving Futures? Learn more below.

          Join us in Peru - June 2025
          Join us in Kenya - Jan 2025
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          Staff and Partners

          Thriving Futures are always primarily the work of Indigenous Peoples & local community members who live in and steward the places we work. The team and partners below stand behind them co-creating this process each step of the way.

          Staff

          Board of Directors

          • Seid Aman, Country Director for Imagine1Day | Ethiopia
          • Tom Dente, Chief of Strategy and Growth, LG Consulting |USA
          • Eric Lundgren, Vice President of Global Operations at Blumont | USA
          • Christabell Makokha, Senior Director of Innovation, CARE USA | Kenya
          • Lucia Ruiz, Former Minister of Environment | Peru
          • Dan Sarles, Executive Director of Eaglemere Foundation | USA
          • Osman Siddiqi, Senior Director of Impact and Market Shaping, Nexleaf Analytics | Kenya & Pakistan
          • Dr. Ailis Tweed-Kent, CEO & Founder of Cocoon Biotech | USA
          • Pete Vorbrich, Former Chief Financial Officer for Carval Investors | USA (Chair of the Board)
          • Alaka Wali, PhD, Former Curator of North American Anthropology at the Negaunee Integrated Research Center, Field Museum | USA
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          “I was so excited to join the Legado board this year. One of the many reasons why is because of Legado’s commitment to work with communities to build legacies—not just to implement one-off projects in silos. I love the approach of engaging communities to think about the future they want to see, then partnering with them side-by-side to execute that future.”

          Christabell Makokha, Senior Director of Innovation, CARE USA | Kenya

          Funding Partners

          Our funding partners provide essential support for the Thriving Futures process around the world. In 2023, we welcomed six key new funders to our community:

          New in 2023

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          Current Funding Partners

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          Financials

          Income

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          Total: $1,433,231.55

          Legado Programs Expenses

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          Additional Program Expenses Paid By Implementing Partners $150,780

          Total Legado Programs Budget: $1,054,648

          *Comprised of Legado and Partner Funding

          Legado Maintained A Strong Financial Position
          In 2023 And Ended The Year With $799,073 In Net Assets.

          “We are in love with Legado. As donors, we appreciate their due diligence and transparency as an organization. But more than that, the return on investment with Legado is huge: You’re giving to an organization that supports the people and cultures who have been stewards of the land for thousands of years. Legado doesn’t take the typical Western approach. Instead, it starts by listening to the community and focusing on its strengths. Any plans are generated by the people of that land and focus on the legacies and desires that local people want for themselves and their own community. Because of this approach, Legado’s solutions are sustainable not just for the planet, but for the people who live in the communities they partner with and their well-being. We see that as an incredible long-term return on investment.”
          - Mark and Sandra Cramolini, Legado donors and 2023 Peru Legacy Expedition participants

          Looking Ahead:
          2024 and Beyond

          What’s next for Legado in this key time of global co-creation and action:

          The all-female Peruvian Futuros Vivos team will kick off 2024
          by Legacy Planning with our first two Indigenous community partners.

          We have new global partnerships on the horizon with communities and organizations who are excited to join the Thriving Future journey—watch for more details in the coming months.
          We will continue to focus on building our global team with local leaders across each of our partnerships—including developing and hiring local leaders from within the communities we partner with.

          Join the Movement

          Support Indigenous People to build their Thriving Futures. Join the global movement to deliver climate justice today!

          Donate Today
          $250Starts one woman on her legacy journey so she can lead change in her community
          $500Invests in a family so they can achieve their legacy goals to better education, health, and environmental outcomes for their community
          $1,000Supports a community-wide Legacy Plan to incorporate local wisdom and create enduring change
          $5,000Launches an initiative to help fulfill a wide range of community priorities, whether it's building a maternity shelter, restoring a rainforest, building a primary school, and so much more