Flow Funding Activists, Brazil: 2025 Stories

Our Flow Funding Programme shares power with tireless activists and visionary leaders by giving them direct access to funds, allowing them to allocate resources based on expertise and intuition. This trust-based, human-centred approach cuts through bureaucracy, ensuring funds reach overlooked communities and projects, creating significant local impact — explored in these stories.

Meet Our Flow Funding Activists 2025-27 Cohort (Brazil):

• ANGÉLICA MENDES — Environmental activist, biologist & human rights defender. Granddaughter of rainforest leader Chico Mendes, Angélica combines science & advocacy to protect the Amazon, continuing her grandfather’s legacy of environmental justice.

• TRUDRUÁ DORRICO — Makuxi writer, researcher & speaker with a PhD in Literary Theory. Trudruá promotes Indigenous women’s literature through the platform Leia Mulheres Indígenas and is author & editor of several acclaimed books and anthologies celebrating Indigenous storytelling across Brazil & Abya Yala.

• MARINA FERREIRA — Biologist & agroecology educator from São Paulo. With a Master’s in Plant Genetic Resources, Marina works on agrobiodiversity, urban agriculture and environmental education, developing community projects that promote sustainable food systems & ecological regeneration.

• LUZENICE MACEDO — Biologist, socio-environmental & cultural activist from the Mid-North Brazil region. Founder of Instituto Maranhão Sustentável, she works on public policy, socio-environmental projects and cultural initiatives connecting environment, health and community development.

• ADRIANA TOLEDO — Iyalorixá, founder & priestess of Ilê Axé Omó Nanã, human rights & anti-religious racism activist, social educator, and cultural advocate. Artist, podcaster, and columnist, she promotes African-derived religions and was honoured with the XVII Prêmio Zumbi dos Palmares & V Prêmio Àsé Isese.

• REGIANE NIGRO — Project coordinator specialising in agroecology & solidarity economy for Frente Alimenta. Regiane is an activist for grassroots organisations dealing with urban agriculture in São Paulo. 

Angélica Mendes: “Flow Funding helps to de-bureaucratize dreams that can create real transformation”

In this time of great transition, what do you feel called to steward?

My experience with projects in the Brazilian Amazon shows that there is much work to be done, but there is no single “big solution.” Real change comes from small solutions, networks, and, above all, visibility and encouragement for the people who live there.

Flow Funding allows us to trust in the potential of what is being built, rooted in the people of these territories. This is crucial because so often solutions are designed and executed by outsiders — professionals with good intentions — whose top-down approaches fail.

Flow Funding helps to “de-bureaucratize” dreams that can create real transformation — because many people lack access to large-scale financing due to limited technical knowledge required to apply for grants. 

This opportunity to support initiatives calls us to care for diverse territories from the perspective of those who live there, often people who feel small but deserve to be seen.

A Flow Funding experience that felt transformative for you?

First, I want to highlight the exchange of experiences across different realities, regions, and countries that our online meetings allowed us to learn more about. 

On a personal level, two experiences stand out:

My grandfather was Chico Mendes, a major socio-environmental leader who left a lasting legacy. He founded the Rural Workers’ Union in Xapuri, Acre, where the local rubber tappers organised the famous peaceful resistance known as the Empates. 

Thirty-seven years after his assassination, the union still faces challenges, including a critical electricity issue affecting its facilities. Through Flow Funding, we were able to support the regularisation of the union’s electrical system. Strengthening this space is important so that rural workers can continue the struggle inspired by Chico Mendes, while symbolically reinforcing that we resist — and will continue to resist.

Another story comes from a young collective founded in 2023, Coletivo Varadouro, which works to protect collective-use territories, like extractive reserves. Flow Funding helped formalise the collective, supporting their fight to secure the rights of youth to live in the forest and maintain these lands. Their struggle is vital, as youth migration from traditional territories directly threatens forest protection.

Beyond these, Flow Funding allowed us to support women and youth initiatives, recyclers in urban peripheries, and other community-led actions that strengthen and defend a better Amazon.

Trudruá Dorrico: “I made a clear choice: All my funding would go to the Amazon, to my people”

In this time of great transition, what do you feel called to steward?

I felt a huge sense of responsibility. At first, I thought I wasn’t qualified to choose the right projects or contribute to the world’s regenerative economy.

Then, I felt a bit overwhelmed and anxious seeing how many initiatives — some I already knew — needed donations. In the end, I made a clear choice: all my funding would go to the Amazon, to my people, so that we can defend and strengthen the world I grew up in.

A Flow Funding experience that felt transformative for you?

The projects I chose to support belong to my Macuxi people in Roraima and the Amazon. I work in education and literature, and while these projects don’t directly focus on that, they still do important work. Being able to donate to the CIR — Indigenous Council of Roraima, which serves over 200 communities across 16 peoples — was an honour.

I also donated to the Escolinha do Boi Caprichoso, which trains young students to become performers and artists for the school and festival. Anyone who lives in Amazonian culture knows that art generates jobs and sustains the economy in the northern region.

The Parintins Festival is the largest open-air folkloric festival in the world, which means nearly the entire island works to make it happen.

Supporting my Macuxi relatives, the Indigenous peoples of Roraima, and projects in Parintins and the Amazon is my way of believing that we deserve a dignified present and a memorable future.

Marina Ferreira: “Flow Funding offered me a light, enriching experience”

In this time of great transition, what do you feel called to steward?

My motivation and guidance in directing the Flow Funding resources were to strengthen people and initiatives working with urban agriculture — true green and regenerative points within their territories.

These people are role models in their neighbourhoods, especially considering the context of São Paulo, a city where generations have not had the opportunity to experience healthy, well-cared-for environments, as many are born and live in landscapes dominated by concrete and poor environmental quality.

In these contexts, people and initiatives that carry ancestral knowledge about how we can and should coexist with the environment are extremely valuable. It’s from these small local examples that inspiration arises to transform public squares, sidewalk gardens, vacant lots, and school green areas. 

I am deeply motivated to support these individuals who embody willpower and resilience, and who inspire me greatly — especially because we are living in a time of climate transition.

We know the challenges are immense, and that’s why it’s essential to multiply initiatives that contribute to climate adaptation, foster social interaction, and serve as refuges for biodiversity — which, in my view, are fundamental for envisioning a future where good living is possible.

A Flow Funding experience that felt transformative for you?

Over this past year, I’ve had a series of feelings and learnings that have been very meaningful to me.

Both the exchange with other group members and the relationships with the beneficiaries have provided me with very positive experiences. I’d like to share a reflection that came to me in recent months, after having been in the programme for some time. I realised that this form of support — based on trust and networks — is extremely effective, both in generating positive outcomes for the beneficiaries and in terms of the time invested by the supporter.

I’ve come to see that we often spend a lot of time and money on projects that demand extensive planning, indicators, reports, and detailed instructions on how funds must be used & accounted for. Along with these demands come stress, exhaustion & negative feelings.

Flow Funding offered me a light, enriching experience, full of learning and, at the same time, an impressive capacity for achievement — all with a relatively small amount of funding compared to other projects I’ve been involved in.

I am truly impressed by the approach and very grateful to be part of it.

Luzenice Macedo: “Supporting such diverse women leaders was profoundly meaningful”

In this time of great transition, what do you feel called to steward?

I feel called to act with deep connection to my cultural territories — caring for what is within my reach and sharing the message of the strength of collective action.

A Flow Funding experience that felt transformative for you?

I was able to support many strong, inspiring women leaders: a master bobbin lace artisan, women leading Bumba-meu-boi cultural groups (a heritage complex in our state in need of protection), a female stingless-bee keeper working with a threatened species, an Afro-Indigenous visual artist and documentarian, a journalist studying African history and culture, an Indigenous leader of the Tremembé people in Raposa, Maranhão, and other community leaders in the Raposa region. 

Supporting such a diverse and important expression of women’s leadership was profoundly meaningful.

Adriana Toledo: “Receiving resources without restrictions was transformative”

In this time of great transition, what do you feel called to steward?

Inspired by the Flow Funding support I’ve received, I am increasingly focusing on strengthening community gardens in São Paulo’s eastern zone.

I am investing in deeper engagement with traditional terreiro communities, and in urban agriculture practices and technologies. This includes leveraging public policies like Quintais Produtivos and repurposing underused spaces in the territories to establish Afro-centered gardens, cultivating plants vital for African-derived traditional medicine, food sovereignty, and cultural practices.

A Flow Funding experience that felt transformative for you?

Flow Funding has been unlike anything I had imagined. Most of the time, we work with no resources or support, and when funding does arrive, it comes tied to rigid, predefined tasks and reporting requirements.

Often, this rigidity prevents us from fully realising our potential.

First, I must say how surprising and meaningful it was to be chosen for Flow Funding: receiving resources without restrictions, and even being encouraged to allocate part of it for myself, was transformative.

This freedom allowed me to reflect on how projects and resources that support women in territories — and in public policies more broadly — are fundamental for communities facing social vulnerability. Caring for and empowering women highlights the absence of men and its impact on women’s mental health, making it clear that supporting men alongside women leaders is also crucial.

For this reason, I directed part of the funding to Iyá Marisa de Oyá of Ilê Oyá Siná, who revives the bordado barafunda embroidery, training women in vulnerable situations, including survivors of violence.

Another part of the funding I directed to Pai Marcelinho de Logunedé, partner of Mãe Shirley de Osayn from Ilê Asé Omi Ewe Ajasé and Caboclo Folha Verde. He collaboratively built the first audio and video studio within a traditional terreiro community in São Paulo.

Beyond his priestly role, he serves as a male role model for many young Black men, most of whom grow up without fathers. He mentors and educates Black men from his own community and from partner communities, such as Ilê Axé Omó Nanã.