Marc Fruitema
Indigenous Peoples and local communities lack the land, ocean and resource rights to be effective stewards of their land and sea. They face threats from extractive industries, development, and climate change. Frontline conservation NGOs are key to supporting community conservation, but they lack the funding and support needed to grow their impact.
The Idea
Organizational strengthening of local community-led conservation organizations
Organization
Organization
Menjadi
The Mission
Thriving people, thriving ecosystems.
How It Works
Community-led conservation works—decades of evidence show it protects landscapes and boosts livelihoods. Menjadi helps scale it in Indonesia. First they source and select effective and aligned local CSOs, and facilitate self-assessments and priority setting for their organizational development. Then they provide ~3 years of comprehensive and customized support, across strategy, impact measurement, communications, and operations. Menjadi also connects their partners with donors and helps them fundraise so they can invest in their organizations and deliver more impact.
The Dream
Local NGOs will hire and pay regional or local consultancies for these kinds of service themselves, directly (albeit through philanthropic funds).
Why We Picked Marc
Mulago believes in community-led conservation. Finding the right way for Mulago to support it isn't always easy given our laser focus on scalability, but Menjadi represents a potential channel towards accelerating dozens of the highest-potential place-based organizations across Indonesia. Marc has worked across Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Americas to support community-led conservation. He spent six years at Blue Ventures—one of Mulago’s longtime portfolio organizations—and has advised Planet Indonesia on rights-based conservation and local governance.
