IARA
Empowering homegrown climate advocacy in the Amazon.
We teamed up with the Open Society Foundation, IKEA Foundation, Aurora Trust, and Instituto Clima e Sociedade to create the Innovation and Acceleration in the Amazon Region (IARA), a capacity-building program to strengthen activist groups and organizations working in the Amazon.
Key Takeaways
7x growth in organizations’ average campaign reach
25% of organizations increased their funding sources
27 climate action initiatives supported
Challenge
The Amazon is at the center of the most important challenges of the global climate emergency. Despite this, climate discussions there are still far from the reality needed to respond to climate change. Activists in the region — who are most impacted and who best understand its context — lack access to strategic forums to present their proposals and advice, as well as resources and tools to develop initiatives and carry out campaigns.
Strategy
Our strategy focused on creating a support structure to strengthen local climate activism and drive political and cultural change.
We worked with local partners to identify climate justice organizations, prioritizing those led by women, young people, people of color and indigenous peoples. Then we developed a 6-month accelerator program that includes workshops, mentoring, and campaign development. Each round of IARA culminates in a celebration event and pitches to funders.
The first two cohorts were so successful that we expanded the initiative’s reach to all states in the Amazonian biome.
Creative
IARA’s visual identity expresses the Amazon region’s great diversity, with a color palette and elements resembling nature, city, people, communication and activism.
Campaign
Campaigns supported by IARA have included Caminhando por Belém, which advocated for better green mobility policies, and Tapajós sem Potoca, which combatted environmental mis- and disinformation. Overarching campaign goals included raising awareness of the climate crisis, awakening urgency for climate action, influencing public debate and securing political commitments at the municipal level.
Impact
So far, we have supported 27 organizations along a journey based on three pillars: financial support and institutional and campaign development. All participating organizations expanded their networks, producing a strong web of partners with professional and legal support. Organizations have also reported growth in fundamental areas including budgeting, goal-setting, more effective leadership structures, and fundraising.
Our policy impact has been substantial. In just one example, several IARA alumni joined Purpose in a rapid response campaign to protest a license for oil exploration in the Amazon. IBAMA (Brazil’s environmental agency) denied the license, with IBAMA’s president personally asking us to continue our work.
““We have a strong network of partners that help us with professional support, training and even in [the] legal [area]. We now intend to improve our engagement with other collectives, mainly [those composed of] youth and women.” ”
Member of a participating organization
