Established Award

Dalia Association is a community foundation established in 2007 with the belief that Palestinians should control their own resources for durable development for future generations.

The Association mobilizes and properly utilizes the resources necessary to empower a vibrant, independent and accountable civil society by acting at the grassroots level, through community-controlled grant making.

Dalia Association community development approach focuses on four dimensions that ensure holistic community development: Ecological, Local economy, Social, and Cultural.

Communities are empowered by being able to control their own development through identifying problems within their community and enacting their own solutions deciding their needs and priorities.

Dalia’s approach in based on the following pillars:

• Making grants to support inspirational and relevant civil society initiatives, especially grassroots efforts that seek to supplement local resources.
• Linking resources revolved around knowledge and skill sharing and fostering collaboration among diverse groups, institutions and organizations. This helps decrease our dependence on outside resources.
• Encouraging giving to cultivate a culture of giving rooted in solidarity and cooperation while revitalizing the indigenous concept of ‘Al-Owneh’ (‘helping-out’) which manifests as a reciprocal support system, benefiting the whole community.
• Advocating for systemic change in the international aid system so that it respects Palestinian rights and responds to local priorities.

Dalia means “grapevine” in Arabic. Almost every Palestinian home has a vine tree, which symbolizes that with care, a grapevine can feed, shelter, and provide beauty for generations. This is exactly what Dalia does: it enables Palestinians to become their own community partners, decision makers, and supporters.

Earth4Ever was established in 2019 to cultivate ecological health and empower marginalised farmers, with a focus on creating resilient farming models that prioritise soil health, water conservation, biodiversity, and nutrient-rich produce.

Its Vad Permaculture Demonstration Farm in Palghar, Maharashtra, India, serves as a hub for outreach and training programs. It also partners with indigenous women farmers and local NGOs to transition from chemical farming to regenerative, biodiverse systems.

Over the past five years, Earth4Ever has:

• Facilitated the setup of ten micro food forests and 45 kitchen gardens
• Launched a Market Garden Incubator project
• Engaged 20 champion farmers.

In the last 18 months, these efforts have generated 1,650 kg of fruits, herbs, and vegetables; 2,280 bunches of leafy greens; and 101 types of produce, grown on just 35,000 square feet of land.

This impact sparked a significant mindset shift in local communities, including with partner NGO, Sukhbhumi India Trust. It has now adopted permaculture principles across its other projects and been approached to train women farmers in Central India, showcasing the power of Earth4Ever’s efforts.

Forests Without Frontiers (FWF) was established in 2019 to restore and celebrate nature with the help of music and arts.

Coming from the global music scene, its founder originally wanted to give something back to the Romanian landscape she grew up in, which has been decimated by illegal logging. FWF has grown from that initiative.

In the context of a threatened and degraded natural environment, FWF collaborates with local people and partners to restore ecosystems through tree planting, tree tending and community events enriched with visual and auditory storytelling. The organisation believes in taking a whole ecosystem approach – supporting trees and forests, wildlife and people, music and art – all at once. It believes in preserving and restoring natural and cultural heritage together, recognising that they are intertwined.

FWF work is based on three driving principles:

• RESTORE – FWF restores degraded landscapes through planting mixed-species trees. It has planted 170,000 trees in the Romanian Carpathians and 10,000 in the UK.
• NURTURE – FWF hosts community tree planting, tending and nature connection events. Its participatory approach fosters connection with the natural world, which is of great benefit to participant’s mental health and wellbeing. Local musicians are invited to play nature-inspired songs, and ecologists give educational talks.
• INSPIRE – FWF creates music and art telling stories of community and landscape. It records in nature, creating soundscapes of endangered landscapes and preserving traditional songs, instruments and folklore which have also been lost, fusing them with electronica for multi-generational resonance.

Grassroots Economics Foundation (GrE) is a nonprofit organisation focused on empowering marginalised communities by developing decentralised economic systems, promoting social equity, and facilitating ecosystem restoration.

Founded in 2009, it has created innovative financial tools like Community Inclusion Currencies (CICs) and the Commitment Pooling Protocol, which help communities manage local resources, foster mutual aid, and regenerate ecosystems through practices like agroforestry, soil conservation, and water management. By merging traditional systems of mutual aid with modern technology, including blockchain, GrE has built resilient and inclusive economic models.

GrE operates in diverse environments across East Africa, including urban, rural, peri-urban, and refugee areas, especially in Kenya. These regions face common challenges like high unemployment, limited financial services, and environmental degradation due to deforestation and unsustainable land use. Despite these issues, these communities possess valuable cultural heritage and traditional ecological knowledge. GrE taps into this wisdom to restore ecosystems and reinvigorate economic and social structures.

Since its inception, GrE has:

• Revitalised ‘Mwerya’, a traditional mutual aid system, to promote community-led resource coordination in the modern context.
• Helped over 100 communities establish CICs (local currencies that allow communities to continue trading even when national currency is scarce), facilitating more than 1 million peer-to-peer transactions. This has reduced poverty and encouraged local trade without relying on national currencies.
• Restored over 1,200 farms and supported regenerative agroforestry across thousands of acres, improving food security and benefiting over 14,000 people.

Permayouth Women in East Africa is a group of four women who have been leading a wide range of permaculture education and food growing programmes, as well as activating Permayouth and Permakids groups in their communities.

Programmes have included:

• Permaculture design courses
• Introduction to permaculture
• Tree-planting
• Ecoliteracy and climate education
• Seed saving and sharing
• Composting and waste education
• Mushroom growing
• Washable sanitary pad making
• Sewing
• Arts and music
• Trauma-informed play
• Holistic nutrition and health classes

The programs are free and respond to the kinds of support people ask for and the interests they show.

Much of its work takes place in refugee settlements in both Kenya and Uganda, and all four women have direct experience of being displaced and understand the daily reality of life in these communities. Community permaculture projects provide spaces where people from diverse backgrounds, including refugees from different countries and ethnic groups, can work side by side, fostering mutual understanding.

Through their collaborative efforts they have seen once-degraded landscapes come back to life with green and bird song. Reforestation efforts are restoring tree cover and sequestering carbon. A diversity of plant species has been cultivated to restore habitats, support pollinators and maintain balanced ecosystems, reducing reliance on chemicals.

Permayouth Women in East Africa receives support from the Ethos Foundation and the Permaculture Education Institute.

Pervolarides Thessalonikis is a growing grassroots voluntary movement for social mobilisation and cooperative actions in Greece. It unites locals and refugees and builds resilience for its community and vulnerable people through solidarity and social actions.

Activities have included:

• Urban food cultivation as an approach to fight depression and to support people who were losing their jobs from the economic crisis.
• A beekeeping project initiated at the start of the refugee crisis in 2015, which Syrian refugees joined.
• Bringing together locals and refugees for community cooking, food waste reclamation and distribution, as well as production of tomato sauce, jams and pickles.

Through the evolution of relations and networks, Pervolarides Thessalonikis progressively established a holistic regeneration approach based on the relations that form throughout the food cycle. From seeding, cultivation, crop collection, processing and cooking, to reclaiming, reprocessing and redistributing food that would be wasted.

Pervolarides Thessalonikis creates democratic hubs where people of all ages, ethnicities and social status come together to express freely and equally, to co-create with their neighbours and to collectively offer support and resources to those in need. Here, abilities, ideas and resources unite and form dynamic social actions and strong supportive networks, empowering people to overcome exclusion and discrimination and to heal from divisions and inequalities.

Australia’s Indigenous Rangers (land stewards) are vital: bringing together ancient knowledge, passed down from generation to generation, with modern tools like drones that monitor coral changes, forest fires and land degradation. Their work is highly valued as they achieve both environmental and employment outcomes, alongside wider social, cultural and economic benefits.

Indigenous Ranger Programs have created more than 2100 jobs in land and sea management around Australia since 2007 and yet in Queensland only 20% of Indigenous rangers are women. That’s where the Queensland Indigenous Women Rangers Network (QIWRN) comes in.

Established in 2018, QIWRN provides a forum for Indigenous women rangers to:

• Share their experiences, ideas and information.
• Provide support and advice to one another.
• Make connections in remote and isolated communities.

The network has helped build the next generation of women rangers and is helping to increase the number of Indigenous women caring for and regenerating their Sea Country (the sea and coastal environment), with very limited resources. Despite the lack of funds, the programme has trained over 240 women, encouraging new conservation approaches by sharing knowledge and telling stories. Members of the network have gone on to find work as rangers in Queensland or in conservation elsewhere.

Indigenous peoples make up less than 5% of the human population. But they manage or hold tenure over 25% of the world’s land and support 80% of global biodiversity. Less than 11% of the global wildlife ranger workforce is female, and so this project believes that scaling approaches to welcoming more indigenous women rangers is more crucial than ever.

Sítio Semente works with syntropic and medicinal agroforestry systems to regenerate degraded areas and to promote the health and resilience of ecosystems and communities.

It is located in Brasília, within the Cerrado biome, the second-largest biome in Brazil and one of the most threatened in the world. About 50% of its vegetation has already been deforested, mainly for agricultural expansion. The Cerrado faces serious risks of losing its endemic biodiversity and water resources, as it is home to the headwaters of the main river basins in South America.

Its main objective is to transform human impact on the planet by developing agroforestry practices that promote harmonious coexistence between people and nature. It shares knowledge through courses, visits, hands-on experiences, and consultancy services.

It began in 2005 with the aim of regenerating degraded areas through syntropic agroforestry systems, producing food, and achieving economic self-sufficiency. In the 19 years since, Sítio Semente has:

• Trained more than 21,370 students, both in Brazil and abroad.
• Regenerated over 47 hectares of agroforests and planted over 2 million trees.
• Produced well over 5,000 tons of diverse foods – enough to feed over 26,000 families annually.
• Sequestered 456,000 metric tons of CO2, contributing to climate mitigation.
• Developed technologies for distilling essential oils, having grown over 220 medicinal plants, mostly native to Latin America.
• Become globally recognised as a reference in syntropic agriculture and influenced national policy.

Spirit of the Sun (SOTS) is an Indigenous Womxn-led organisation that was founded in 2002 on the belief that effective and sustainable community development work recognises the intersections of culture, community, economy, and health.

After its founding, SOTS worked primarily on reservations, assisting various communities with economic development. In 2010, its strategic focus shifted to include programming in the Denver area of Colorado, US, responding to a need to empower the growing number of Native youth and young adults moving to urban areas.

In 2019, Spirit of the Sun began to focus its work on Indigenous regenerative agriculture and has been caretaking land ever since. At garden and farm spaces across Denver, SOTS works towards preserving the cultural practices of Indigenous foodways by growing traditional, bioregional foods and medicines. The land is cared for using Indigenous foodways to restore ecosystems, feed the community and preserve Indigenous cultural knowledge for future generations. SOTS also maintains a seed library of heirloom and native seeds – connecting the project to past and future generations.

This work promotes Native and Indigenous self-determination, and resiliency by addressing systemic environmental injustices and food apartheid through Indigenous food-systems sovereignty, traditional foodways, and Indigenous climate justice. Through working with local Native and BIPOC communities, SOTS seek to strengthen economic and cultural resilience through Rematriation and ancestral ecological practices, soil remediation and knowledge sharing.

Support Humanity Cameroon (SUHUCAM) is a grassroots development and environmental organization, with the objective to build inclusive, self-sufficient and sustainable communities and a world where people live happily in harmony with one another and with nature.

SUHUCAM is an accredited organization with the three Rio conventions and the United Nations Environment Program where they represent voices of communities on the frontline of Climate change.

Its key areas of intervention include ecosystem restoration, regenerative agriculture, climate change adaptation, livelihood support as well as water and sanitation. Its work focuses on women and youths in hard-to-reach communities in Cameroon.

In 2019, SUHUCAM launched Bamunkumbit Integrated Community Forest (BICFOR), a transformative initiative to restore 151 hectares of degraded land while enhancing the livelihoods of local and indigenous communities.

Since the launch of the project, several activities have been implemented to strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacities of local communities. Specifically:

• Over 50 hectares of degraded land has been restored.
• Over 150 women and youths from indigenous Mbororo and local communities adjacent to the forest have been provided with alternative livelihoods, through apiculture and regenerative agriculture.
• Over 500 smallholder farmers engaged in agroforestry practices.
• Four community-based restoration groups established with an active membership of 120 persons
• Four watersheds restored and conserved to harness the natural water supplying the reservoir, ensuring potable water supply to over 4,000 people.
• Collaboration between pastoralists and smallholder farmers (key landscape actors) have been enhanced, creating an enabling environment for sustainable growth for everyone.