Q&A with Diane Pereira Sousa on Community Philanthropy

Diane Pereira Sousa is the President of Instituto Comunitário Baixada Maranhense, a community foundation that draws on the local resources of the poorest state in Brazil to deliver on the development priorities of residents. In 2018 she was elected an Ashoka Fellow for her work incubating the use of sport for positive youth development. The IAF has been funding Instituto Baixada since 2020.   

What does community philanthropy mean to you?

For me, community philanthropy is a tool for thinking about development in a new way, from a human perspective. 

In Instituto Comunitário Baixada Maranhense, we’re always saying that we invest in people who change realities. We help people define what they mean by “development” and what they mean by “transformation,” because transformation can seem like something that’s too big to tackle. We help people figure out exactly what they’re aiming for: not just that people can access education, for example, but that people can achieve a good education that gets them access to a solid job that lets them live with dignity. That thinking starts people on a process towards achieving their goals. If we don’t do that analysis, we’re just giving people cold juice to stave off the heat, but the heat continues. 

Community philanthropy recognizes that development already exists in the real world within communities. While many entities are responsible for advancing community development, the communities themselves are taking the lead. We invest in work that’s already being done. Instituto Baixada couldn’t do this by itself. The Inter-American Foundation or local governments couldn’t do this by themselves. But without us, many communities are moving forward with their plans to build a community center, set up a coffee cooperative, or hold after-school tutoring for young people. 

For example, there’s a group of Black women leaders who’ve been making artisan handicrafts from clay. Any development for their communities they’ve been generating all by themselves for 200 years. We’re now supporting them with our IAF grant. We have to learn from that history, these women who are the heads of their families and leaders in their communities who’ve been working without outside support for so long. 

People who work in public policy are putting a lot of energy and thought and resources into moving the needle, like increasing the number of Black people attending university. In community philanthropy we’re also thinking about how to build this transformation together with communities. For example, we’re starting with young people who are trying to access university and figuring out why: where do they want to go? Many are studying business management because they want to be entrepreneurs. We’re working directly with people to figure out the additional support they need to achieve their priorities over the long term. We won’t just work with a young university student but accompany them as they get funding to start and grow their business.  

How has community philanthropy developed in Brazil?

I’ll tell you a little about my life so it’s easier to understand. I’m from the interior of the state of Maranhão, from a city called São Bento. I grew up in a family that was mainly headed by women, in a community where people didn’t have much. My grandmother sold plants from her house, and the woman next door sold rice. I rarely saw any physical money—coins, bills—but I saw exchanges. I would always see my grandmother leave with rice and come back with flour, and it was the same with my friends’ mothers. So I grew up in a context full of solidarity and empathy. That’s the root of community philanthropy. They would give things to each other voluntarily, without expecting a return, because they noticed that someone was lacking. If I saw someone eating something that’s normally eaten with flour without it, I would just give them some. I grew up in this commune of women seeing people manage to live this way, because there was no money. Society revolved around the women, who would make decisions together, like where to send their children for school.    

I know that the term “philanthropy” is closely related to charity, when it’s not community-based. But I like to think of philanthropy as going beyond charity. When we give as charity, we’re characterizing the person who receives it as lacking something: “I’m bringing you love in the form of rice, you poor thing.” 

But philanthropy wasn’t invented by a wealthy business person. People were already on the ground, cooperating with each other. Philanthropy shouldn’t be from the top-down, or from the bottom-up. Rather, we should all be on the same side, just wearing slightly different clothing. Philanthropy really emerges from real support between people—equal people, not rich people and poor people.        

What brings you to the field of community philanthropy and your current role?

When I was 13, a nonprofit called Instituto Formação was developing social programs in 10 different cities in the region we call Baixada Maranhense. My city, São Bento, was one of those cities. For the next five years, they trained me in civic participation. I was a member of the fourth cohort of young people they had trained, and young people from earlier cohorts were thinking through how to take this work forward. We knew that Instituto Formação would only be working in the area for a total of 10 years. They had a lot of discussions, studies, trips, and exchanges. Together with Formação, these young people decided to launch Instituto Baixada, not as a standard nonprofit but as a community philanthropy organization. It would be made by people from Baixada, for people from Baixada. At 18, I went to work with Formação building social technologies [approaches to solving people’s short-term challenges]. I would develop solutions like a portable soccer field that schools could set up if they didn’t have a space for their students to play sports. I made an incubator for youth projects in 2018 and was recognized as a fellow by Ashoka. That same year, I also became an associate of Baixada and later a superintendent. My undergraduate training is in law, and I have a Master’s in human rights. I’m currently studying three subjects that apply to my work: youth, alternative education, and community development.  

So I shifted from working primarily in social technologies to working in community philanthropy. The difference is that, while community philanthropy can use and draw on social technologies, it takes a much more big-picture and long-term view. While a social technology might find a solution so that women can save time in transporting their artisan products to market, community philanthropy would take a step back and ask, “why are the women bringing their products to market like that? Are there other markets that would be better for them?”    

Where do you see the community philanthropy sector going in the near future?

The sector is undergoing a major change in terms of recognizing communities as active subjects in development. This shift cannot be postponed, as communities have to actively participate in proposals for their own development. For communities to grow, some people may need to voluntarily make space by stepping back or otherwise making room. The community philanthropy sector is going to grow a lot. I hope that as it does, it thinks about communities from the point of view of their potential, not their vulnerability. 

I also like how we’re moving the focus of community philanthropy away from external financing and towards how communities are making development reality. Part of this is moving away from larger funders to more individuals collaborating. I think it will grow like a movement. In Instituto Baixada, we only exist because individual people from our state are helping people in their own state. For example, we have a multimedia laboratory in Itamatatiua. We need 100 reals [approximately $19] per month to pay for the Internet. Ten people from Baixada donate 10 reals [$2] every month so we have Internet, and that’s happening in six other communities. We’re talking about people who earn a minimum wage of around 1,200 reals a month [$230] supporting young people they don’t even know so that they can have resources to study. I think that growth in individual donations is going to be strong over the next five years. What we’re saying is that everyone is an investor, whether they give 10 reals or 10,000. We’ve been developing a technology to help promote that attitude, a credit system where the interest you return on your loan gets reinvested in others. I think that really changes your perspective and level of involvement—you start seeing others as allies in your effort.     

Thank you so much, Diane! We look forward to seeing what happens next in the field of community philanthropy.