Instituto Ibirapitanga is dedicated to defending civil liberties and strengthening democracy in Brazil. Since 2017, it supports initiatives through its two programs:
Ibirapitanga funds organizations, movements and collectives within Brazilian civil society that seek to bring about positive structural transformations in the country. Ibirapitanga values the autonomy and institutional capacity of the organizations it supports, seeking to build relationships based on trust and allowing for flexibility and openness to experimentation.
Instituto Ibirapitanga gives priority to initiatives that dialogue with its areas of focus, selecting them through direct identification (letter of invitation), specific calls for proposals or by evaluating proposals received in letters of intent.
Filmmaker Walter Salles founded Instituto Ibirapitanga, whose resources come from the earnings of an endowment fund.
Ibirapitanga’s strategies and priorities are grounded in principles that underpin and guide its work. They define its purpose and shape the terms of the relationships it establishes internally and with partners. The ongoing pursuit of these principles influences its grantmaking, monitoring and evaluation processes, the definition of objectives and goals, and the ways it engages in its fields of action.
The starting point for building Ibirapitanga’s partnerships is trust, understood as a daily practice and an ongoing process of construction.
Marked by challenges and by the recognition of differences, the practice of trust involves relinquishing control and strengthening organizations’ autonomy in decision-making.
One of the most effective ways to address the power asymmetries inherent in funding relationships is to give visibility to the purposes and actions undertaken and to remain open to being influenced through interactions with partners.
In this sense, Ibirapitanga values listening and dialogue in the design of its strategies and embraces the possibility of revisiting its choices in light of the present context.
Ibirapitanga seeks to put its principles and values into practice internally and in its relationships with partners and society, striving to align discourse and practice.
By establishing solid foundations for its strategy, it aims to pursue it with firmness, quality, and regularity, while remaining open to flexibility.
Ibirapitanga is a tupi-guarani word for the pau-brasil tree. Ybirá means wood or tree and pitanga means red, a reference to the tree’s heartwood, which was used to dye fabric.
For its qualities and identity, the ibirapitanga tree carries the marks of the construction of Brazil.
As the writer Eduardo Bueno explains in the epilogue of Pau-Brasil (2002), it is the “most perfect and most relevant metaphor for Brazil’s natural resources; the botanical symbol of the usurpation of our citizenship and of our own omission throughout the process.”
