The three-day event brought together supporters, financiers, volunteers and professionals from Fundação Baixada to experience and debate community philanthropy with Baixadeiros.
*Ambassador is the way Fundação Baixada calls people who support the organization.
“Living in the community is like fuel to transform it.” This is how Diane Pereira Sousa, president of Fundação Baixada, defines the importance of the event. The meeting's agenda was full of a series of activities and experiences in which it was possible to experience the daily life of the community from the inside out, understanding its demands “When we think about community philanthropy, how people can interact to transform their own territory, how people manage to build the idea, the dream of transforming their own territory, there would be no other way of thinking about a philanthropy meeting if it weren’t for inside what those who do philanthropy on the ground, transformation”, Fundação Baixada team and Camila Guedes, communications advisor at Rede Comuá. points out Diane.
For Diane, contact with the territory is fundamental: “It is essential for us, a founding element, to be able to think about how we can talk about philanthropy while being in a territory where philanthropy happens. It is very important for us to bring together everyone we have gathered, partner organizations, networks we are part of, funders, teachers, professionals, teams, companies, to get to know the territory, to talk about the territory, feeling and stepping on the ground of the territory. We always adopt this strategy because it is easier for you to understand how the Baixada works if you are here, living the day to day life of those who are in the Baixada, going through the portals that the Baixada has, Quilombo de Itamatatiua production center into your floor.”
Following the meeting, Fundação Baixada intends to strengthen ties with the actors with which it already has links, aiming to enhance and expand its capacity for action “We understand that, for development to happen - and here I am talking about small development , not this huge thing of developing one million to one, I'm talking about one to millions – it's important to network, financial resources, ideals and people. Our expectation revolves around this: how we can strengthen ourselves with the networks we have, how we can expand the possibility of fundraising and, above all, how we can mobilize other people to be interested parties, supporters or even volunteers of the work .”
