CASA Socio-Environmental Fund is a not-for-profit grantmaking institution that mobilizes and channels financial and capacity-building support to social and environmental initiatives of NGOs and community based groups in South America. Their strategy is to make many small and interconnected grants covering all the South American eco-regions. These small grants, allied with an integrated vision of the territory, generate significant impacts in a wide range of issues and regions. Throughout their 10 years, they have supported more than 1000 projects in 11 countries.

Forests and rivers do not respect country borders; most biomes extend across the territories of several countries. This is also how CASA works. They are a Brazilian based Fund that coordinates its grantmaking in South America in a way to guarantee that the impact generated really responds to the complexity of local reality, for they acknowledge that one single solution does not fit all. They work with a wide, and non-replicable, network of partners — a true social capital. They rely on people and institutions that have built, throughout decades of work and accumulated experience in South America, a true body of knowledge, able to detect precisely the vulnerabilities of each region and propose the most appropriate solutions.

Their grants go directly to the benefitted community, eliminating intermediaries. Our goal is to strengthen the capacities of community organizations that work on issues of environmental protection, community development, institutional strengthening, renewable energy, protection of water, environmental defense by women and youth, among others. In order to make resources get into the hands of communities so far away and yet so innovative, they need to fundraise. They work in partnership with national and international philanthropic institutions that understand their  strategy and use their structure to distribute funds to groups that they, alone, cannot access directly.

They also raise funds from individuals. Everyone can donate and contribute to the social development and environmental preservation of South America.  If we care about the precious biomes of our region, we cannot just let the most remote and excluded groups of our society bare the burden of this task alone. The population of the great urban centers of our countries can collaborate with the preservation of our rich ecosystems and traditional cultures through CASA Socio-Environmental Fund.