Our Roots

The LAN PAWANKA was established as a result of more than eleven years of support provided by the Pawanka Fund to indigenous organizations across the world’s seven sociocultural regions. This journey allowed us to identify lessons learned, common challenges, and avenues for strengthening that laid the groundwork for designing a participatory action plan aimed at building, together with our partners, a program that responds in a coherent and culturally relevant manner to the needs and priorities of Indigenous Peoples.

As part of this action plan, a collective and participatory organizational assessment was developed, which serves as the direct starting point for the LAN. To carry this out, Pawanka conducted a preliminary analysis with strategic partners, which allowed for the selection of a focused group representing the seven regions, forming a heterogeneous sample that reflects the diversity of trajectories, structures, and organizational processes of indigenous peoples.

This process was carried out through 38 virtual interviews, during which the voices, experiences, perceptions, and knowledge of the targeted indigenous organizations were gathered. A culturally relevant diagnostic tool was jointly designed and implemented, addressing key areas such as governance, strategic planning, administrative and financial management, project management, external relations, and capacity building.

The methodological approach was grounded in the guiding principles of the Pawanka Fund: complementarity and reciprocity as the basis for horizontal exchange; interculturality and a gender perspective as recognition of internal diversity; self-determination as a guarantee of organizational agency; and solidarity and intergenerational transmission as the essence of collective learning processes.

The result was the collaborative creation of a diverse map of organizational realities, bringing together strengths, challenges, and visions expressed directly by the partners. This body of knowledge became the foundation for LAN PAWANKA, a program born from the voices and experiences of the indigenous organizations themselves, which seeks to foster a form of cooperation based on trust, cultural relevance, and intercultural philanthropy.

Likewise, the collectively developed diagnostic tool will become one of LAN’s first proprietary tools. It will soon be made openly available so that interested organizations can access it, replicate it, adapt it to their contexts, and continue to strengthen their capacities based on their own realities and organizational structures.