Grassroots International

Excruciating poverty, rampant deforestation and political instability from the outside in have taken a toll on the Haitian people. But even in the midst of this, powerful social movements and grassroots organizations offer local solutions for the country's long-term growth. And it is those groups that form Grassroots International's Haitian partnerships.

Using a multi-layer strategy of grantmaking, Grassroots’ Mesoamerica program supports regional networks, national peasant and indigenous organizations and local groups dedicated to the development of alternative policies to globalization. At community and national level, Grassroots’ goals are to support the development of sustainable livelihood practices and strengthen the organizing among different communities and groups. At regional level, we partner with broad networks led by peasant farmers, indigenous, and women.

Through partnerships with organizations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip), Grassroots International supports community-based organizations providing essential services and advancing rights to land, water and food. And working with allies and partners we facilitate international linkages to support and amplify the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and peace with justice.

Our international partners are, as you might imagine, welcome our support. But they’ve also pressed us: It’s not enough, they say. You have to change the U.S. policies that open the world to U.S. corporations and make it so hard for small producers around the world to protect our livelihoods, they tell us.

To answer that call, we have increased our support to powerful activists who can do just that. And we support and collaborate with U.S. groups seeking links to global movements.

With land, water and seeds increasingly controlled by a small number of poorly regulated transnational corporations, effective social change for resource rights and a fair food system must match this global reach. We call this life-giving cross-border work globalization from below. This work puts us at the front lines of the struggle between private gain and public good.

In that work, we are honored to have formed partnerships with powerful and visionary global networks like La Vía Campesina, which represents more than 200 million small producers in over 70 countries.

Farmers have worked the rugged land in Western Africa for generations for food and livelihood. All that changed when the government planted a virtual “For Lease” sign on the land. China and other buyers grabbed it up, quickly draining the land of nutrients with vast fields of monocrops for export.

This is the plight of many farmers throughout West Africa. Massive land grabs – combined with the influx of genetically modified seeds under the banner of the “Green Revolution,” and the promotion of laws that criminalize seed-saving and open markets to free trade – come with empty promises of increased agricultural productivity and the end of hunger.

This so-called “Green Revolution” is responsible for poisoning precious farmland with toxic chemicals while profiting agro-industrial giants at the expense of the families and communities who depend on – and care for – the land.

Many threatened small farmers are joining a growing movement-building effort of peasant farmers who are part of We Are the Solution, a network of women-led family farmer organizations in five countries of West Africa, working to promote agroecology and food sovereignty as an alternative to the corporate takeover of agriculture in the region.

The Fund to Advance Resource Rights in West Africa supports grassroots organizations and social movements in West Africa that advance food sovereignty, climate justice and the human rights to land and water as solutions to hunger, poverty, and ecological disruption. It prioritizes support for social movements and community-based efforts that are led by women, small-scale farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and youth as those most impacted by these forms of injustice, and therefore the best experts in creating lasting solutions.