Get together the candlelights: Streghtening the regenerators network

Juntar las velitas: Strengthening the Network of Regenerators in Motion in Southwestern Antioquia

In the tropical Andes of Southwestern Antioquia — one of Earth's most biodiverse and threatened regions on Earth — dozens of grassroots initiatives are quietly doing the work of regeneration. Campesino families restoring native forests. Indigenous seed guardians protecting ancestral varieties. Young people mapping biodiversity along rivers. Women-led collectives building regenerative economies. Coffee farmers returning to agroecological practices. Artists weaving cultural identity with ecological care.

They exist. They work. But they need each other more than they know.

The Red de Regeneradores en Movimiento (Network of Regenerators in Motion) was born from the belief that these scattered "little flames" of hope — as our community calls them — become a fire when they find each other. Since 2021, Corporación Visión Suroeste has been mapping, visiting, and connecting over 50 grassroots initiatives across 11 municipalities of the Cauca River basin, building what is now a living network of place-based regenerators committed to the collective stewardship of this bioregion.

The network emerged from a moment of crisis and resistance. When AngloGold Ashanti announced plans to build one of Colombia's largest open-pit gold and copper mines in this territory — the Quebradona project — our communities united. Over 70,000 people signed a petition. Citizens, farmers, indigenous peoples, artists, and youth organized across political and cultural differences to defend their rivers, forests, and livelihoods. In 2021, Colombia's national environmental authority denied the mining license. But AngloGold retains its mining titles and the legal right to reapply — and with Colombia's 2026 presidential election potentially bringing a pro-extractivist government to power, the threat to our bioregion remains real and urgent.

This is why resistance alone was never enough. We needed to build something lasting — not just against extraction, but for regeneration. As we say: not only fighting the beast, but awakening the beauty.

What we have built so far:

In December 2023, we held our first Network Assembly — 25 initiatives, 28 people — marking the formal beginning of collective governance. A post-assembly survey found that 90.5% of participants considered self-governance of the network highly feasible, and 12 leaders immediately committed to driving it forward. In August 2025, our second Assembly gathered members to co-construct shared ethical principles, map real bonds between initiatives, and deepen a participatory governance model built on reciprocity, cooperation without competition, and care for life in all its forms.

Alongside this, we have organized three editions of the Festival del Río — a participatory river festival reconnecting communities with their waterways through seed bombs, storytelling, art, and collective memory, bringing together over 300 participants per edition across municipalities of the Cauca basin. We have facilitated Dialogues for Good Living across the territory, and co-led the Alianza Cartama Sostenible's participatory biodiversity monitoring network, which has recorded over 4,100 observations of 1,183 species across four river basins — including the first recorded sighting of three species new to science and one species recorded for the first time in Colombia.

What this project will do:

With $15,000 USD, this project will deepen the network's roots through three in-person territorial encounters and one virtual learning cycle — all co-designed with network members, who will define the specific themes, locations, and methodologies of each activity through participatory processes.

The first encounter is a Convite of Mutual Nurturing: a territorial learning day rooted in the traditional Andean practice of communal gathering and reciprocal aid. Network members will meet at one of the initiatives' own sites to learn by doing together — designing a syntropic agroforestry system, restoring a water source, planting a biodynamic garden, or implementing another nature-based solution chosen collectively by the group. The host shares their knowledge, land, and practice; participants bring their hands, their questions, and their own wisdom. This is regeneration as pedagogy — learning written directly into the landscape.

The second encounter is a Bioregional Regenerative Economy Gathering: a living marketplace and alliance-building meeting where network members connect their products, services, and knowledge with local buyers, institutions, and potential collaborators. Through a regenerative market and structured rounds of cooperative alliances, we strengthen the economic fabric that makes long-term stewardship viable — shifting from competition for scarce resources toward abundance through cooperation and reciprocity.

The third encounter is a Participatory Science Gathering for Biodiversity Monitoring, building on the momentum of our existing citizen science network. Members will strengthen their capacities as bioregional scientists — learning monitoring methodologies, using tools like iNaturalist, and contributing observations to open biodiversity databases that support evidence-based territorial governance. The people who know this territory best are the ones who live and work within it. This encounter transforms that intimate knowledge into science.

Running in parallel throughout the year, the Virtual Learning Cycle brings together inspiring leaders, practitioners, and experts from across Colombia and beyond for four online sessions on ecological and social regeneration themes. Topics will be defined participatively by network members before each session. Each encounter is designed as a two-way exchange — not a lecture, but a conversation between different forms of knowledge — ensuring that external expertise enriches but never replaces the wisdom already present in the territory.

Running through all four actions is a transversal commitment to three things: deepening the network's governance (building the self-management structures that allow it to function independently of any single organization), strengthening cohesion (the fraternal bonds between people that make collective action possible and durable), and sharpening a shared narrative of bioregional regeneration — so that every member of this network can articulate, with confidence and clarity, why this territory matters, what they are building together, and why it is worth defending.

When regenerative initiatives become connected through relationships of trust, mutual learning, and shared territorial identity, they increase their collective resilience against extractive pressures and strengthen their long-term capacity to steward biodiversity and water systems. This is the theory of change that guides our work. And the network's long-term sustainability does not depend on continued external funding — it grows from the autonomy of its members and the culture of reciprocity already emerging organically across the territory. This project accelerates that emergence.

The network is not a project with a beginning and an end. It is a movement. This funding will help it stand more firmly on its own feet — with its own governance, its own rhythms of encounter, and its own collective capacity to care for one of the planet's most vital and threatened ecosystems. When we bring the little flames together, the territory lights up.