The Global Land Forum is less than a week away! ILC took a quick break from the preparing to interview four of the speakers of the upcoming GLF. All from different backgrounds, the speakers gave great advice on staying #United4LandRights. Take a look at what Kathy Reich from the Ford Foundation had to say about the current states of land rights and about this year’s Global Land Forum!
Ford Foundation – Portrait Session 2016
Kathy Reich is a director at the Ford Foundation’s BUILD initiative, a $1 billion initiative to strengthen institutions to fight inequality both in the United States and in the foundation’s 10 global regions. This year she will be speaking at the Global Land Forum.
How does the Ford Foundation support civil society organizations around the world to leverage social change?
[At the Ford Foundation] we believe that social change is driven by visionary individuals, strong institutions, and innovative, often high-risk ideas. While the specifics of what we work on have evolved over the years, investments in these three areas have remained the touchstones of everything we do and are central to our theory of how change happens in the world. Our Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) initiative is one of the key ways we’re supporting civil society organizations around the world. Our support aims to strengthen these institutions, making them more effective at achieving their core missions, and reducing inequality in all its forms.
Can you describe the Ford Foundation’s approach in Indonesia and some of the initiatives it has sponsored there?
Our work in Indonesia, and around the world, is focused on disrupting what we see as the five underlying drivers of inequality: entrenched cultural narratives, failure to invest in and protect vital public goods, unfair rules of the economy, unequal access to government, and persistent prejudice and discrimination. We believe that the people closest to the problems have the clearest lens on diagnosing solutions, especially when it comes to something as intractable as inequality. Throughout the foundation’s 65 years in Indonesia, we’ve supported our local partners across a broad range of efforts, including sustaining and growing an anti-corruption movement. Today, Ford and our local partners are focused on ensuring that all Indonesians, including vulnerable and marginalized communities, are able to derive greater benefit from natural resources.
What do you hope the participants will get out of the Global Land Forum? What is your message to the ILC members attending?
I hope that GLF participants will leave the Forum with a greater sense of their collective power to shape local, regional, national, and global policies and practices around land. My message to attendees focuses on how donors and civil society organizations can work together to achieve a vision of a more equitable future. A future where natural resources are managed in ways that confirm economic benefit, while ensuring the health of our planet for future generations. A future where women, indigenous people, and members of racial and ethnic minorities are the architects of their own destinies. And a future where CSOs work collaboratively with governments to help ensure that they are truly responsive to the concerns of, and respectful of the rights and dignity of, all of their people.
The Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) initiative is a five-year, $1 billion investment in the long-term capacity and sustainability of up to 300 social justice organizations around the world. For more information please visit the Ford Foundation website.
