Capacity Building

Cultural Survival provides capacity-building opportunities through youth fellowships, training, gatherings and community exchanges, international fora participation, networking, and one-on-one mentoring to Indigenous individuals and organizations. We host residencies to Indigenous writers and artists.

The goal of our capacity building work is to increase and strengthen the capacity of our grassroots Indigenous community partners to exercise their rights and self-determination. We respond to our partners' expressed needs in areas that match our themes of work, including Indigenous community media, climate change solutions, lands and livelihoods, languages and cultures, and the leadership of Indigenous women and youth. We build on strengths that already exist within our communities.

Indigenous Youth Fellowships

We support individuals and groups of youth with funds of $2,500-$6,000 to carry out projects that build their leadership and technical skills and support their wider community. Fellowships have allowed youth to build capacities in Indigenous rights, revitalization of Indigenous languages and cultures, Traditional Knowledge, and audiovisual communications. CS staff provides one-to-one mentoring from the start to the completion of their projects. Since the beginning of our program in 2018 to today, we have awarded 137 fellowships that have supported 305 youth from 117 Indigenous nations. 191 of these fellowship projects were led by Indigenous young women.

Supporting Indigenous Women's Leadership

We carry out in-person and virtual workshops for our Indigenous partners, especially in elevating women leadership, on topics such as land defense, human rights, radio production capacity, and more. These types of workshops offer the opportunity to share experiences and knowledge, strengthen actions to develop work plans in their communities, and implement tools, knowledge, and skills acquired during the training. In recent years, CS has carried over 25 training across Latin America and Nepal. We are currently planning to expand to other countries and have a more holistic approach to combine technical communication skills with Indigenous worldviews, human and collective rights, land defense, climate change solutions, and women's rights.

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Indigenous Writing and Arts Residence Opportunities

As part of Capacity Building, we provide opportunities through not only our youth fellowships, training, gatherings and community exchanges, and international fora participation, but also remote residency opportunities for Indigenous artists and writers.

In 2022, we launched our Indigenous Writer's Residency Program. This is a meaningful opportunity for Indigenous writers to continue their creative work, share their expertise, and enhance their knowledge and exposure to writing related to topics important to them and their communities.

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Community meetings and dialogues

We know that expertise already exists within Indigenous communities. On major topics of importance, we gather leaders, knowledge holders, changemakers, practitioners, and stakeholders together to build consensus, share best practices, and move solutions forward. Some recent events that we hosted and co-hosted include:

In October 2023, we held the “1st International Women Defenders Gathering of the Amazon Basin” in Bolivia. At this event, Indigenous women from Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador, gathered to develop skills in the use of digital security, mechanisms, and tools for writing proposals for community projects. They also exchanged knowledge and experiences of community processes in defense of land and protection of life.
In May 2023, we hosted our second gathering on language titled “Grassroots Indigenous Language Exchange and Convening” in Oaxaca, Mexico. Its aim was to facilitate the exchange of teaching-learning methods of Indigenous languages, didactic and financial resources, and to share the experience and knowledge acquired on the administration and management of programs focused on language preservation and revitalization.
In February 2025, we are planning to host an exchange and dialogue in Brazil. Its objective will be to build solidarity and connections amongst communities. In a broader way, we aim to help build capacity for advocacy based on the rights to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, and to self-determination, in the context of transition mineral mining.

Partner Exchanges and International Forum Participation

In collaboration with our Community Media Program and the Keepers of the Earth Fund, we continue to facilitate the exchange of experiences of community partners through visits and trainings. Our new strategic planning aims to create and exchange opportunities with organizations in different areas or different regions. For instance, organizations with land defense and FPIC experiences visit communities that have been vulnerable to resource extraction, hydroelectric and mining projects.

In January 2024, we hosted an exchange and dialogue on Lands and Livelihoods in Honduras. At this event, we facilitated conversations and activities to gather the views, experiences, and knowledge of the participants related to the connection between lands and economical means of support, and discussed future strategies and actions to strengthen them.
In 2023, we held three dialogues on Free, Prior, and Informed Consent in Guatemala, Mexico, and South Africa. We brought grant partners, ancestral leaders, and legal experts to discuss a path forward on implementation of FPIC protocols in defending their territory.
In December 2024, we will host a climate change exchange for our grant partners in Colombia to offer tools, resources, and propitiate knowledge-sharing.

International Fora Participation

Every year, we support our partners by accompanying them to international fora where they can share their work and experiences as Indigenous organizations and changemakers in their communities. These spaces include, for example, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the UNFCCC COP.

Needs and Next Steps

Fellowships: We hope to offer more youth fellowships in new geographies with an increased amount, including the US, Canada, Asia, South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. We would also like to host an in-person youth fellows gathering in 2026. As part of the fellowship we would also like to offer other types of fellowships such as projects focused on cultural exchange, entrepreneurship, writers, and arts.

Training: We want to expand the topics of our workshops across all the themes of our work. We would like to focus on providing more technical training, and digital technology skill building opportunities for Indigenous women working in the areas of land defense and climate change solutions. Over the next three years, we plan to build out more training on the topic of Indigenous livelihoods, in partnership with our long-standing Bazaars program that provides a market to Indigenous artisans and cooperatives in New England.

Gatherings and Convenings: We want to continue to offer gatherings for our Indigenous partners to exchange their experiences and knowledge from different geographic regions, as it is a valuable opportunity for growth.

Exchanges: We would like to continue supporting the very successful and more targeted community-to-community exchanges that we carried out in previous project cycles. We are inspired to match communities with complementary strengths and weaknesses to allow for the development of mutual support networks from one Indigenous community to another.