Uplifting selfless grassroots volunteerism for a kinder, more compassionate world.

A veterinary student watched a street dog die of thirst in 42°C heat.

And decided he would never just wait for the next one to arrive.

Meet Anish Khanal, fifth-year vet student from Lumbini, Nepal, and founder of Project BOW, Bowl of Water. Our newest grantee.

Bhairahawa`s summers are brutal. Temperatures climb past 40°C, and for hundreds of street dogs, birds, and cattle, there is no safe place to drink. Gutters are toxic. Water is scarce.

Anish lived the consequence of that. A street dog arrived at his teaching hospital limp, gasping, already in organ failure. His team ran every emergency protocol they had.

It wasn`t enough.

The dog died. Not from a complex disease, but because, in a city of thousands, he couldn`t find a single clean bowl of water.

That moment changed everything.

Project BOW is Anish`s answer. 50 community-guarded water stations across Bhairahawa. Daily hydration for 150 to 250 street animals through the deadliest months of the year.

But the vision goes further than water.

Each bowl is stewarded by a local shopkeeper, a Guardian, who refills it, maintains it, and becomes an active animal welfare advocate. People who never saw themselves in that role before.

This is grassroots philanthropy. A young person from the community, with firsthand knowledge and the drive to act, turning personal grief into collective care.

Anish can`t stop the sun from beating down on Bhairahawa`s streets.

But he can make sure those streets are no longer a desert.

Welcome to the family, Anish. We believe in Project BOW. 🐾💧

#ProjectBOW #AnimalWelfare #Nepal #GrassrootsPhilanthropy #NewGrantee #StreetAnimals #CommunityImpact #VetStudent #BowlOfWater #Lumbini ...

New Grantee🌟

When the next climate disaster hits, will cities be ready to feed their people?
Meet Noah Wescombe — Head of Policy at ALLFED and a globally recognised resilience expert — who is building the blueprint for urban food systems that can actually withstand collapse.

Based across the UK and USA, Noah`s research tackles one of the most urgent and overlooked questions in climate adaptation: what happens to cities when food supply chains break down? His work maps how urban centres can rapidly deploy shelf-stable, low-resource foods in the face of climate shocks, supply disruptions, and humanitarian crises and crucially, exposes the hidden costs of not acting: food insecurity, spiralling public spending, and delayed emergency response.

With deep roots in climate finance — from the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment to advising major global institutions — Noah brings rare cross-sector firepower to a problem that demands it. And with Brazil emerging as a pivotal market for alternative proteins, this work has the potential to shift how entire regions think about food security.

This is exactly the kind of bold, systems-level thinking that grassroots philanthropy exists to back. No bureaucracy. No waiting. Just urgent, high-impact research that could shape policy, protect lives, and accelerate the shift toward a more resilient, plant-based, and equitable food future.

We`re proud to support him. 🌍

#FoodResilience #ClimateAdaptation #PlantBased #AlternativeProtein #AnimalRights #FoodSecurity #Philanthropy #ALLFED #ClimateAction #UrbanFoodSystems ...

Instagram | New Grantee Announcement

What happens when the people who once fought for justice, peace, and human rights are forced to flee everything they knew?

Meet Hamidakhanim Giyasbayli, a peacebuilder, Nonviolent Communication practitioner, and civil society leader from Azerbaijan, now living in exile in Berlin 🇩🇪

Her project, Listening Across Exile, is creating something quietly powerful: free, volunteer-led workshops in Nonviolent Communication for migrants and people living in political exile.

Activists, journalists, and human rights defenders who have fled authoritarian environments often arrive carrying grief, fear, burnout, and deep loss. Legal and humanitarian support matters, but the emotional wounds of exile rarely get a space of their own.

Hamidakhanim is building that space.

Drawing on over a decade of peacebuilding work across the South Caucasus, and on her own experience of exile, she will lead small, intimate workshops where participants can explore emotional awareness, express their needs safely, and navigate conflict with compassion.

The long-term vision is just as meaningful: self-sustaining practices of care and nonviolence, rooted in migrant communities in Berlin, carried forward by the participants themselves.

This is grassroots philanthropy at its most essential. No large institution. No top-down program. Just one deeply experienced practitioner, her community, and the belief that honest dialogue can rebuild what displacement breaks.

Welcome, Hamidakhanim. We are honored to walk alongside this work.🧡

#NewGrantee #GrassrootsPhilanthropy #Peacebuilding #NonviolentCommunication #MigrantCommunities #PoliticalExile #Berlin #ListeningAcrossExile #CommunityHealing #CivilSociety ...

🌟 She turned her pain into purpose — and now she`s changing lives.

Meet Sherleen Tunai Lumumba, a grassroots changemaker from Kakamega, Kenya, and one of our newest grantees. Born with albinism into a small farming family, Sherleen knows firsthand what it means to choose between hunger and the sun — and the devastating price that choice can carry.

In Kakamega, 148 out of 232 people with albinism depend on farming to survive. But for people who lack melanin, working under the sun means relentless sunburns, skin damage, and a very real risk of skin cancer. In 2024 alone, 8 farmers with albinism lost their lives to the disease. Climate change is making it worse.
Sherleen refused to accept that survival had to come at the cost of health and dignity.

Through her Nuru Mushroom Initiative 🍄, she is training 30 farmers with albinism to grow organic mushrooms — indoors, safely, away from harmful UV rays. Mushrooms need no sunlight, no large land, and little capital. They grow in 3 to 8 weeks and yield high returns. It`s a solution that is safe, simple, and sustainable, and one that was designed from lived experience.

This is what grassroots philanthropy looks like: a person from within a community, who has lived the problem, building the solution. Sherleen isn`t just teaching people to grow mushrooms. She is building a bridge between survival and dignity, pain and purpose.

We are proud to support her. 💛

#GrassrootsPhilanthropy #Albinism #Kenya #NuruMushroomInitiative #SkinCancerPrevention #Kakamega #CommunityLed #SocialImpact #NewGrantee ...