A diverse and multiple movement that seeks to give visibility to the agendas and practices of community philanthropy and social justice in Brazil
By Graciela Hopstein
In September 2022, Rede Comuá organized the Philanthropy, Social Justice, Civil Society and Democracy Seminar in celebration of 10 years of its operation. In this context, the Network managed to mobilize 220 participants, who were present in São Paulo throughout the two days of debates, 360 people online, 110 organizations, 50 speakers, in addition to 35 institutional supporters and 6 financiers who directly supported the event.
In 21 hours of activities, Comuá, its associates and partners were able to debate and reflect on a variety of topics such as decolonial philanthropy, trust and new arrangements, aiming at horizons that translate into changing power relations and fostering initiatives aimed at building a less unequal society (with regard to access to rights) and recognition of political minorities.
Audience during Seminar held by Rede Comuá in September 2022
Audience during Seminar held by Rede Comuá in September 2022Considering the success achieved in the seminar, and seeking to continue the power of the debates held in 2022, Rede Comuá will promote, from the year 2023, in the month of September, the Month of Philanthropy that Transforms, conceived as a fixed space in the national philanthropy calendar (in the same way as Black Philanthropy Month, in the month of August). Based on the development of a diverse set of debates and reflections, this event aims to give visibility to the initiatives, actions, practices, experiences and knowledge that drive the community philanthropy and social justice agendas in Brazil.
O Transformative Month of Philanthropy it arrives as a movement, as a wave that involves different actors and dynamics. To this end, independent and community funds, private foundations, financiers, networks, national and international associations and civil society actors will be mobilized, committed to these agendas, showing their power in promoting structuring actions of change through donations that drive transformation in the field of access to rights and strengthening Brazilian democracy.
The program will include the development of various activities in multiple formats (in person and online) such as debates, conversation circles, launch of publications, cultural events, which can be promoted in different locations across the country: territories, communities, cities, biomes, where the organizations involved operate, together with the participating audiences.
In this way, the programming aims to promote and raise awareness of the philanthropic ecosystem and Brazilian society to the problems and challenges linked to community development, inequalities in access to rights and human rights violations, recognizing the role of philanthropy as an actor capable of contributing for creating solutions and driving systemic change.
Rede Comuá will work on mobilizing actors and coordinating the activities proposed by the different actors, that is, bringing together the different initiatives into a collective program, facilitating their dissemination, but also counting on the collaboration of all partners involved. We want to act collectively, and for this we need to act in an articulated and networked way, showing the impact of agendas and actions in the field to give visibility to the systemic change we seek.
Certainly, the movement that Rede Comuá seeks to install with the Transformative Month of Philanthropy is aligned to #SshiftThePower, as it adopts a long-term perspective in promoting transformations: “we want a future that is negotiated, participatory and widely appropriated by people. A future that is developed through values and processes based on the generosity of a movement, rather than the success or failure of one institution relative to others.”[MR1][1]
Expanding voices, ways of seeing, of developing, rejecting the colonial perspective, is a movement that has been taking shape and expanding in various parts of the world. And increasingly online. The time has come for Brazilian philanthropy to forcefully integrate itself into this framework and increasingly contribute to real social transformation through the strengthening of civil society, understood as a strategic action to consolidate democracy in the country.
From these initial ideas we emphasize, once again, that the Transformative Month of Philanthropy seeks not only to mobilize multiple actors and diverse agendas in the field of philanthropy, but to promote an authentic plural movement, a collective action that has the capacity to chart new paths, to build new times and spaces, contributing to installing an authentic movement of rupture and transformation .
