By Gelson Henrique, Marcelle Decothé and Raull Santiago
It is nothing new to see that organizations, collectives and movements based in favela and peripheral areas carry out urgent work that has a direct social, political and economic impact on their communities and territories in Brazil. However, the visibility of the challenges that these groups have in accessing private social investment in the country – which operates based on structural inequalities of race, gender and class – is something that drives the imagination of our actions.
It is worth noting that the context of political, economic and social crisis in which we live demanded from public and private, national and international funding sources, the sensitivity to identify projects and initiatives that impact realities and enhance the country's transformation. However, the long-term projection of the sustainability of initiatives that advance this solidified and non-punctual social transformation still rests on a lack of perspectives and a scenario of uncertainty.
This ability to quickly move resources to grassroots movements in Brazil is essential for creating resilient and effective strategies to deal with crises and reduce inequalities in the country. Understanding and building this reality, aligned with actions that aim to raise awareness among strategic actors who hold the agendas of grantmaking in Brazil, it encouraged four activists from Rio de Janeiro to come together to create the PIPA Initiative.
In recent years, the increase in the transfer of resources to social organizations in the country has expanded the institutional potential of the field, strengthening this ecosystem in general. However, by not considering organizations, collectives and peripheral movements as priority actors for receiving medium and large resources, philanthropic financing practices in Brazil perpetuate distortions in the capacity of civil society to meet urgent social and political demands and encourage the non-sustainability of the field. More importantly, these practices fail to see the many possibilities for real impact on the territory that flourish from grassroots initiatives.
PIPA's first institutional action was to begin a diagnosis of access to financing by movements and collectives from peripheral areas across Brazil, in order to explain in data the need to rethink the way in which the field of private social philanthropy operates in the country. In our research, using a form with closed questions, of the more than 70 organizations mapped, 49.3% identified themselves as Collectives and Movements of Favela and Periphery. Of these, 35.6% were participants from states in the North and Northeast.
When we address barriers to access to resources, 33% of these collectives and movements indicated that they manage less than 5 thousand reais annually to carry out their activities, and 54% only survive with resources donated by their own members, thus highlighting the precariousness and vulnerability of their operations. of these collectives on the outskirts of the country. Regarding institutionalization as a barrier, more than 80% believe that having a CNPJ facilitates fundraising, and more than 90% of the organizations interviewed said they had difficulties accessing private social financing in the country. Among the barriers to contributing to this perception, externally the presence of bureaucracy on the part of financiers and the notion of competitiveness appeared more, and, internally, what we could see was that more than 26% said they had difficulties in managing financial and of resource projects, in addition to not being able to pay the team and not knowing where to find sufficient funding.
The PIPA Initiative understands that the current logic of allocating private social investment not only perpetuates structural inequalities of race, gender and class, but also contributes to people and peripheral groups capable of impacting the realities of their communities and territories not having access to significant resources. to carry out your work. Therefore, we are in the world to promote this agenda with our body, territory and political articulation!
Marcelle Decothe, co-founder of PIPA, social scientist, doctoral student in Sociology (UFF) and Advocacy Coordinator at the Marielle Franco Institute. She is an advisory advisor to Brazilian civil society organizations. She was a project consultant for the Grita Baixada Forum, the Institute of Religious Studies (ISER), worked with campaign development for Amnesty International Brazil and is one of the founders of the Favelas na Luta movement, responsible for mobilizing anti-racist protests throughout Brazil in 2020.
Gelson Henrique Silva, co-founder of PIPA, social scientist, master's student in Public Policy and Human Training (UERJ). He is one of the founders of the Itinerant Youth Caravan (CI Joga), an initiative that seeks to encourage the political participation of adolescents and young people in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro, and a youth advisor for the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) in Brazil.
