The Mara-Serengeti ecosystem, located in the border of Kenya and Tanzania, is home to Indigenous pastoralist communities who have stewarded land and ecosystems for generations. Yet despite their deep knowledge and long-standing presence, these communities—particularly women, youth, and people with disabilities—continue to face exclusion from decision-making spaces that shape their futures. They are among the first to feel the impacts of climate change, but among the last to be heard in the design of solutions.
Courtesy of Pingo’s Forum.
From land grabs in the name of conservation to shrinking access to grazing areas and natural resources, the challenges rooted in colonial systems of governance and development. Women in particular face compounded challenges: navigating climate shocks, economic inequality, and patriarchy while still holding communities together. Youth are often excluded from leadership, and people with disabilities are routinely left out of planning altogether. Despite this, these groups continue to organize, lead, and advocate—often without the recognition or support they deserve.
In response to these dynamics, a core priority that emerged from the participatory systems mapping process in Arusha was clear: the need to strengthen the agency, visibility, and leadership of marginalized groups—especially women, youth, and disabled people—in climate resilience and land governance efforts. The grant partners announced here* are working at the forefront of this vision, each in their own way building power and possibility in a landscape marked by displacement and long-standing structural injustice.
PINGO’s Forum, in Tanzania, is a coalition of over 50 Indigenous organizations working to defend the rights of pastoralist and hunter-gatherer communities. Their $150,000 grant will support legal and advocacy work, training for women, youth, and people with disabilities, and a range of participatory processes to amplify the voices of communities most affected by climate injustice and land dispossession.
Traditional Ecosystems Survival Tanzania (TEST) takes a unique approach by integrating traditional ecological knowledge with policy advocacy and research. This $100,000 grant will support the documentation of pastoralist conservation practices, build leadership among Indigenous communities, and promote changes that recognize and protect Indigenous governance systems.
Olderkesi Women Community Based Organisation (OW), operating on the Kenya-Tanzania border, is a women-led grassroots movement made up of more than 80 self-organized groups. With $50,000 in support, OW will strengthen women’s and youth’s knowledge of land rights, support the creation of nature-based enterprises, and facilitate greater access to public funding opportunities for marginalized community members.
* We seek our partners’ consent before sharing any public announcements and fully respect their decision should they choose not to be featured.
These grants were proposed and reviewed following the systems mapping workshop, as part of a pilot effort to link participatory systems analysis directly with resource allocation. Staff and board champions identified a shortlist of organizations working in or near the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem and submitted grant recommendations aligned with the priority of strengthening marginalized voices, resulting in a total of $450,000 in funding distributed across four partners. This approach builds on CJRF’s broader experimentation with participatory grantmaking and trust-based philanthropy.
As these four organizations move forward with their work, CJRF remains committed to learning from them, supporting their strategies, and continuing to explore how systems thinking and participatory design can reshape how funding flows in the climate justice space.
Read more about the participatory systems mapping methodology here.