Legado Annual Report 2025

A Year When 360° Community-Led Change Mattered More than Ever

Dear friends and supporters,

2025 was a year when we witnessed the critical importance of 360° Community-Led Change in new and impactful ways.

Aid cuts and other sector-wide shocks rocked communities working for a better future around the world. However, amid the uncertainty, a powerful truth emerged: investing in local community leadership—and ensuring growth and development happens on their terms—is a far more resilient approach to advancing community and environmental well-being.

For Legado and our partners, that realization 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, despite the tumultuous year, we saw dozens of communities taking the lead on building their own Thriving Futures.

With the help of our tremendous community of support, Legado was able to continue walking alongside communities as they own a collective vision for their Thriving Future, sustaining the well-being of people and their territories across generations. We hope this Annual Report gives you a glimpse of what that looked like.

Thank you for being part of this Thriving Futures journey with us.

Majka and the Legado team

Report photos courtesy of Roshni Lodhia and Legado team members

Legado is

a women-led, global nonprofit that works alongside Indigenous, Afro-descendent, and local communities in places of ecological significance. We support communities to design and implement solutions of their choosing, benefiting people and landscapes alike—an outcome we call Thriving Futures.

Where We Work

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The Legado Approach

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What We Do:

We Activate Legacy

We work alongside Indigenous and local communities to activate legacy. A legacy is a vision people set for themselves and their landscapes that builds on their communities’ already existing strengths.
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How We Do It:

360° Community-Led Change

Working alongside communities, we take a 360° view of priorities, considering how all aspects of well-being intersect. We foster 360° participation, bringing in a large group of community members, including women, elders and youth.
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The Outcome:

Thriving Futures

Indigenous, Afro-descendent, and local peoples lead efforts at every step along the way as they advance holistic solutions relevant to the challenges they face.

The result of our approach?

91% of priorities designed with Thriving Futures drive regional planning across our partnerships, and 94% sustained forest cover in priority lands stewarded by our partner communities.*
*From monitoring in Mount Namuli, Mozambique.

Our 2025 Reach & Impact

Legado’s Thriving Future process honors the rights of Indigenous, Afro-descendent, and local communities to develop and implement sustainable solutions that are relevant to the challenges they face. Impact is defined by the communities’ self-determined priorities, and includes:
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116

communities engaged in Thriving Futures.
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447,037

hectares stewarded using Thriving Futures.
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9

partners using the Thriving Futures Process.
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82%

of Thriving Futures communities receiving follow-up funding.
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94%

sustained forest cover across lands stewarded by our partner communities by co-creating a process that incorporates how communities define biodiversity and what actions they prioritize for conserving it.
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Up Next

2025 Program
Highlights

Program Highlights