Pollinating Regeneration

We need international cooperation more than ever. But multiple projects of international cooperation are still failing to include historically marginalised communities on sustainable financial models. We understand this problem comes from the lack of engagement and representation of indigenous and local communities even in projects taking place in their own territory.

The initiators of Meli's Network are part of a new generation of leaders from a region known as "Arc of Deforestation", the location where most deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon historically takes place. Coming from that region, we know environmental crimes are often related to crimes against human rights (modern slavery, multiple cultural losses, death threats, etc.). While growing our network to other regions, we saw similar behaviour in multiple areas, particularly in indigenous communities.

That’s why our activities are primarily concerned about the engagement of the communities. Our program Pollinating Regeneration is a good example of how these problems can be solved, as the communities were the actors moving the projects since their ideation phase. We understand the communities are not only the location where our activities are taking place, but also who should be in the leadership of the activities.

We enable indigenous and local community leaders to develop projects from their own ideas, so they can reach financial inclusion based on their context, needs and wishes. The activities supported have social and environmental positive impacts. For that, the Pollinating Regeneration Program has three phases: ideation, pre project and execution.

The ideation phase starts with the training of leaders from indigenous and local communities on a methodology to listed to project ideas from multiple members from their community. The training events happened in-person or online. With the clear understanding of the methodology, they go back to their community and listen to its multiple members what are the project ideas they would like to develop. To do so in an environment where all participants are from the community, the participants can be comfortable and lead very open discussions. After their ideas are raised, they also share their opinion about the urgency of each of the ideas, in a shared decision-making process.

Meli previously engaged the community leaders in its network, so they already trusted the organisation and were motivated to develop the ideation activity in their communities.

Based on the experience the communities shared, we select communities showing large interest and potencial for social and environmental positive impact. The project ideas they raised might be in very different stages, from projects with clear goals, budget, outputs and outcomes; to ideas that still need help to look for the best problem solutions.

Meli offers support from experts (external partners or other peers) on subjects as regenerative agriculture, biology, technology for managing their territory, storytelling, etc., so the communities can turn their ideas indo a fundable project.

Meli also supports with funds and connections with new donors, so the communities can access to funding to develop their projects. Seeing the results of their own work, they start to understand themselves as green changemakers that can lead large positive impact with large positive impact.

The project "Ma'eputyr" (Guajajara Tupy for "flower") is a good example. In this project, the local leaders collected seeds from their territory to locally produce seedlings and reforest areas which suffered with invasion of illegal fires; they are currently checking the possibility of new sustainable supply chains with the mentioned seeds; they also support the care of locally native bees; and use a georeferencing and area monitoring application to facilitate their activities. All project activities, since its idea, were selected by community members themselves and they have flexibility to lead their activities, once we fully trust their goals of protecting their forest and their community.

To engage the global audience concerned with climate justice questions, we also organise events, such as "International Decolonail Journey" and keep social media, blog and newsletters to informe about the regions we're active, the communities members of our network and the activities they are developing with our support.

Check an overview of Meli's first two years of activities.

Indigenous and local communities are the center of our impact network. We support their peer to peer interaction and organic connections among themselves. This produces an environment where they support the bioeconomy activities with positive impact developed by each of them.

We use groups of online platforms for the interaction of community members. We also host recurrent online calls to interact with the larger number of communities. During the calls, one community leader is invited to give an "opening talk" and the participants continue the conversation interacting in a healthy manner and exchanging knowledge and experiences.
We host circa two in-person events per year with a part of the communities' members. Our regenerative agriculture workshops are space of traditional seeds exchange.

We connect the communities through hubs, made by communities which are geographically close. The hubs give the previously engaged communities located in a determined area the autonomy to locally engage other network participants which might not be accessible otherwise (due to lack of internet connectivity, per example). Rural and indigenous communities of a particular location often have previous experiences with communities in their area and are the best to confirm the similar values and interest on leading regenerative practices of their neighbours.

It's important to also highlight the strong participation of indigenous and local communities members in our team and in our decision making processes.

Meli was started by a migrant in Germany from the Brazilian Amazon, particularly a region known as "Arc of Deforestation". The communities that engaged on Meli during the first year of projects (2021) were a part of my direct network or of friends or of organisations I admire since a long date. In our second year of activities (2022) we opened calls to reach more communities with shared values. We could see the communities sharing the word about our activities and the network growing in an organic manner.

Having indigenous heritage myself, I grow up very aware of the complexities of the agrarian conflicts in the region and seeing the problems of the erasure of indigenous culture in my own family (loss of language and religion, alcoholism, racism, etc.). These experiences helped me to understand and connect with the (now more than 50) communities that are a part of Meli’s network.

It's important to highlight the communities that connected with each other through Meli's network are currently in the processing of opening a new association in Brazil, Associação Rede Meli Brazil. The association is fully led by indigenous and local communities and has its full independency and has no associated member which also participates on Meli Bees Network gUG (it's German partner).

Most Meli team members are based in the Brazilian legal Amazon and/or have deep experience in the region and can understand the reality of the communities engaged in our network. Our team members also include members from indigenous and marrom communities.

With the Pollinating Regeneration program, we currently support 10 communities to develop fully community-led projects with the program Pollinating Regeneration.

In average, each community lead projects with 200 direct  beneficiaries, leading us with an estimation of 2.000 current total beneficiaries of the program.

Because I would like to have support to scale our program and reach other locations of the globe, developing more projects with deep local understanding, started by ideation activities developed in the communities.

I believe Solve's network could potentialise our work and help us reflect on our current pilot program, to build an even stronger program.

We bring a perspective of impact network and understand we need to work together to reach regenerative practices, with clear vision and values.

We are connected with the indigenous and local communities on the ground and deeply listen to their needs and wishes. We understand they are the leaders of effective regenerative practices impacting nature and community in a positive manner.

We support the communities' relationship with each other, in a peer to peer manner. It's easier for them to listen to each other once they already have a previous relationship of trust and because they speak a similar language, when they have similar past experiences.

At the same time, we support their connection with international partners to happen as directly as possible.

We want to prove that indigenous and traditional communities supported by in an impact network can lead large and efficient positive impact not only in their own communities, but scalable to the entire network.

We will grow the Pollinating Regeneration program to reach more communities and support the cross-pollination between communities working on similar projects.

We currently focus on project supporting regenerative production to support their own livelihoods and/or reach local markets they already have access to. The next steps will focus on stablishing new sustainable supply chains with the regenerative products. We intend to do so in partnership with local and international universities and with B-corporations to develop our activities in the best way possible. We understand the need to be careful to avoid undesirable impacts and be careful with multiple perspectives while starting new supply chains.

In five years we plan to have worked with at least 1.000 communities

We are collecting information and documenting every stage of the program.

A few indicators:

Communities engaged in the project ideation phase: 52
Communities selected to be supported in the pre-project phase: 10

Estimated funds raised by clients, donors and communities to develop the projects: 125.000€

Activities:

- Ideation methodology training with community leaders.
- Receive ideation results from communities.
- Select communities based on their ideation activities.
- Support the Pre-Project phase with selected communities.
- Multiple communities' engagement within the program.
- Connect communities with expert partners (peers or external) and with donors.
- Share about selected communities, their project development and results.

Output:
- Ideation workshops fully developed by the communities, sharing project ideas that are really important to them.
- Fundable projects developed with the communities, for the communities.
- Multiple long-term projects, with large social and environmental positive impact. The first 10 communities selected are developing projects related to: Regenerative Agriculture, Food Processing, Indigenous Food, Foraging, and Native Bees.
- Communities connected with each other in an impact network, sharing about their reality and problems they are facing.
- Solutions coming organically in exchanges between the peers.
- Communities connected with new partners.
- Audience informed about the activities and their results.

Outcome:
- Communities proud of "being recognised as decision-makers and putting our ideas in the paper", as it "strengthens our vision and our desire to pursue our goals" (Ana Maria, Campo de Perdizes foraging community).
- Experience on leading impactful projects with bioeconomy topics and positive social and environmental impact.
- Larger community leadership on topics as Regenerative Agriculture, Native Beekeeping, Indigenous Food, etc.
- Communities trusting and supporting each other.

We are proud to have a very diverse team, including members from indigenous and maroon communities, +50% female members, and LGBTQIA+ members.

Meli is an impact network with members from indigenous and local communities.

Together with the network members, we develop projects with social and environmental positive impact.

The projects are funded by clients and donors and cover all project costs and Meli's overhead costs.

Meli also received multiple scholarships and prizes that covered our overhead costs and helped us expand our orvanisation.

Meli has developed projects with multiple clients and donors, including: L'Occitane Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Lush Charity Pot, Ecosia.

Meli raised more than 100.000€ in 2023.