Thrive Philanthropy with Jessika Ava

[00:00:07] Mariann Sullivan: I am so excited to have you... well, it's always nice to talk to you, but I really want to hear about what you're doing. I was calling it a project before we started recording, but this is much bigger than a project. This is a big thing.

People probably don't know a lot about Thrive Philanthropy because it's really new. Can we just start off by maybe a very broad overview and then we'll spend the rest of the interview getting into some details?

[00:00:27] Jessika Ava: Yeah, certainly. Thrive Philanthropy is a global grant making and capacity firm, and our mission is to overcome industrial animal agriculture and create just, plant based food systems. And we do this by offering grant making support all across the globe, and also offering leadership development, coaching, and management development for our grantees as well.

And then in addition to that, we also connect donors with organizations all across the globe, and we have various types of donor initiatives as well to ensure that we can also get additional funding to global advocates that way as well.

And then a bit more about Thrive is we're also a BIPOC majority organization, and right now we're an all woman team, and we are also one of the first organizations in the vegan philanthropy space to be led by a Native American woman.

[00:01:17] Mariann Sullivan: I have to say I've known you for a long time, Jessika, and I never knew that you had Native American heritage.

[00:01:23] Jessika Ava: Yeah, I'm very white-passing, I look like my white mother.

[00:01:27] Mariann Sullivan: Well, aside from that, you know, just never came up before and it's really something to hear about, and I want to hear more about it. I'm trying to avoid saying things like, that's really cool, which doesn't seem adequate to the topic, but it is really cool. And, you know, it gives you a perspective that I was not aware was there, and I want to hear more about it.

But first, I want to hear more about Thrive Philanthropy, because it sounds like somebody decided that, okay, we're going to change the entire world. We have to stop just talking to American activists, which, you know, is an important project, but there's a whole world out there. And there's a whole world of people who care about animals and so we're going to reach them.

You haven't existed very long, but you have already reached a lot of places with funding. Just give us an idea of that global reach.

[00:02:11] Jessika Ava: Yeah, and I think it might help a bit if I talk a bit more about our background. Should I go into kind of what led up to Thrive Philanthropy before I talk about our reach so far?

[00:02:21] Mariann Sullivan: Sure. if that would be helpful, that would be great.

[00:02:24] Jessika Ava: Yeah, I think that helps to set the stage.

So I've been working in philanthropy for about 14 years now, and most of that time has been within the animal and vegan space. I look at philanthropy as this invisible force that happens behind social justice movements, because any work that's being done in social justice movements, or being done in the nonprofit sector, most of that work is going to require funding.

It's going to require money and a lot of organizations, they can't pay it on their own. So they're going to be looking for outside sources to find funding revenue. And so a lot of the work that happens within social justice sectors, a lot of that is dependent upon the type of work that philanthropy does.

So the type of funding that philanthropy is willing to give to, the type of strategies that philanthropy is willing to give to, and so forth. So that's why I think of philanthropy as this invisible force that's happening behind not only the vegan movement, but all social justice sectors.

And so, as I've been working in my career in philanthropy, one role that I played previously is that I was able to develop and lead one of what we believe was the largest international vegan grant making funds at the time. And during that time, I was really able to get a lot of funding out to organizations all across the world and really able to significantly expand the global vegan movement.

And at that time we were funding about 70 countries or so. And then when I was there, I began to think, you know, we're doing this great work, we're getting a lot of funding out to build the global movement, but how could we improve upon that? How could we expand it? How could we do this even better?

And how could we also ensure that philanthropy, this invisible force that's working behind the movement, how could we also ensure that we're doing that the best way that we possibly can? That is essentially how Thrive was born. The founding team has been working together closely for a couple of years, so we do have a history together, and then we came on and we launched Thrive last year. When we launched Thrive, we had three main aims and three main niches that we wanted to fill in the movement. And the first aim, of course, was to expand the global movement and ensure that funding was able to get out to countries all across the world.

And then the second aim we had was to dismantle accessibility barriers to funding because I was noticing that there were a lot of very remarkable advocates that, they were encountering hurdles when trying to access funding opportunities. And this was happening a lot in Global South countries as well.

So with Thrive, we really wanted to work to dismantle these accessibility barriers, ensure that all organizations have equal access to apply for funding. And then the last aim that we had with Thrive was to see how we could do philanthropy the best way that we possibly could. And the way that we choose to do it is we use an equitable funding approach.

This is also known as a trust based philanthropy approach, if there are any philanthropy nerds out there, but with an equitable funding approach, essentially, what it does is it gives organizations and grantees the flexibility to use funding with the strategy that they deem most impactful. And there's very few restrictions and criteria and so forth, so that the organizations really have the flexibility to work in the most impactful way that they can with the funding.

And then also with the equitable funding approach, we try to really dismantle the power dynamics that are seen between a grant maker and a grantee and put us on an equal partnership. And then when we're in an equal partnership, it means that we're able to build a more authentic and trusting relationship with our grantees, and then that enables us to offer even additional support for them.

We can help them problem solve. We can help them with additional resources, introduce them to new donors and so forth. So, by working through these various methods, using equitable funding approaches, dismantling funding barriers and so forth, we feel like it really helps to ensure that funding gets out across the globe in the best way possible and also reaches organizations that may not have otherwise had opportunities to apply for funding.

[00:06:40] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, it sounds like an amazing project, but it, it also brings up so many questions of how you make this work because there are risks involved too. I mean, as we all know from life on this planet, to trust somebody is to take a risk in every single context. And I'm sure that is here too, but also you don't achieve anything without trust either.

So two of the risks that occurred to me, when you're talking about this is there are some people out there who are just crooks, so you have to have some kind of caution and double checking to make sure that your money is going to what it's told for. But the other thing, which I guess is very specific to our movement, is the whole vegan thing.

I mean, there are many people who are doing very fine work and care about animals and care about the planet, but are not taking the same approach that vegan advocates are taking. And you know, that's all fine, but you might have funders who don't want to fund that. So how do you deal with those challenges and still build this?

I mean, I love the idea of empowering people to make their own decisions and to not feel that they're constantly reporting to somebody about whether they're good enough. So how do you deal with the risks as well?

[00:07:47] Jessika Ava: Yeah, absolutely. So we do have a vetting process, certainly, as you know, all grantmakers do and also when we have an opportunity to build an authentic relationship, we get to know these organizations in a deeper and more meaningful way. And then also we can look at their track record of success. We can look at past histories and so forth.

So we do have a vetting process that we go through to ensure that funding is being used as it's intended to be used. It's not as if we just freely hand out money and wish it good luck. It's not like that, far as, which would be nice, but unfortunately we can't do that. And as far as there being donors who have their own certain criteria and so forth, so we do rely on other donor support.

So we're an intermediary organization. So we have a grant making pool and then within that pool, various foundations and donors apply to that. And then we redistribute the funding throughout the world. And so we're also on the grantees side of it as well. So, of course, we also encounter donors who have their certain restrictions and maybe they don't want to give to certain methods or whatever it may be.

We just work to navigate that. I mean, there's not like a simple answer to that. It's all in a 1 by 1 basis, but we just work to navigate that and we work to find donors who are also aligned with the type of work that we're doing and the type of approach that we use and create partnership with those donors as well.

So I don't know if that answered your question, but I think that kind of got to the heart of it.

[00:09:14] Mariann Sullivan: I guess I would love it if you drilled down on the vegan question, because like my whole life is a matter of drilling down on the vegan question, but if that's not something that you can really do, if it's not as specific as that, I understand that as well.

I mean, it's just that, all of us navigating our own lives and navigating our funding and everything so often comes down to the fact that we are passionate about veganism and the rest of the world doesn't get it, and that can create such conflicts.

[00:09:41] Jessika Ava: So you're asking how do we determine which organizations to fund depending on their method or...?

[00:09:47] Mariann Sullivan: Well, if you have a funder which I assume you do, who care very deeply about not a welfarist campaign, of which there are many, and I wanna get into that, like, the choices between funding cage-free campaigns or whatever, and funding vegan campaigns.

Do you make that a requirement for your grantees? Is that a bottom line, or is there flexibility there?

[00:10:07] Jessika Ava: So our funding goes towards changing diets, essentially removing animals from the food system. So that's where our grants go right now. So at this point in time, we're not funding cage free systems and welfare work.

We're looking at organizations that are working to essentially remove animals from the food system and create sustainable plant based food systems. And as far as the type of strategy that they use to do that, this all depends on their culture, their country, the community they're working with, and so forth.

So we don't dictate the type of strategy that they can use, and we are willing to accept proposals that use all different types of strategies. But the one outcome is that it works towards removing animals from the food system and creating a plant based food system.

[00:10:56] Mariann Sullivan: I love the way you put that. I think that's very, very helpful. I mean, because the word vegan brings up so many different thoughts for so many different people, and even though that's what I think of as a vegan strategy, saying removing animals from the food system makes so much more sense.

You're actually stating your goal, your actual goal rather than a word that stands in for your goal. So that makes so much sense to me. Can we get back to the question that I started with, but you wanted to give a little bit more background. Can you just give us a geographical sense of where you are funding just to get that overview?

[00:11:26] Jessika Ava: Yeah, absolutely. So we have been running for a little less than a year now, and already we've been able to reach one out of every three countries in the world. So that means that one out of every three countries in the world, they have a vegan movement...

[00:11:39] Mariann Sullivan: That's insane, Jessika!

[00:11:41] Jessika Ava: We exceeded our own expectations.

We were very surprised that we were able to reach this much so quickly. But yeah, so right now we are funding one out of every three countries in the world for grants and also offering capacity building support. We have distributed about a hundred grants in almost 60 countries now. And we are in every continent except Antarctica.

If there's anyone in Antarctica listening, it's like my goal to reach someone in Antarctica. So contact me. But right now we haven't reached Antarctica yet. And we've also focused a lot of the time this year, our first year, on Africa and catalyzing the Africa Vegan Movement as well. And also we have been able to reach about 30 percent of African countries through grant making and our various movement building initiatives as well.

[00:12:32] Mariann Sullivan: You know, this question, this is something I had pulled from your website and I wanted to ask you about it. You sort of touched on it in your prior answer, but I think I'll go back to it a little bit because you talk about equitable and culturally relevant grantmaking. Can you talk a little bit more deeply about what that means in an international context?

How do you pull it off, working in so many cultures and where do you draw those lines and how do you know? Obviously there are things that go on in other cultures, in countries where we would love everybody to adopt a vegan diet, or take animals out of the food system, that culturally are very different from ours, and some things we may not love, but we still don't want them to eat animals, just because we don't agree on absolutely everything.

If you're in a third of the countries on the planet, how do you deal with that?

[00:13:19] Jessika Ava: Yeah. I think the best way of dealing with that is to have the humility and to accept that we don't know what's going to work in every single culture. I am certainly not an expert in every single culture of the world, not by far. And so we kind of come from a place that we don't know what's going to work in all of these other countries.

So when an organization comes to us, when they apply for funding from us or capacity building support from us, we will speak to them, we'll hear more about what they believe works, more about the strategies that they think are going to work in their region, and also more about how they believe they're going to contribute to essentially removing animals from the food system.

And it might be a situation where in some countries they can be very outspoken about veganism and plant based diets, but then in some countries and some communities, they may have to kind of go in a roundabout way about it. So I think the way of getting around the fact that we're working with so many cultures, the main thing is just to have the humility to know that we're not the experts in these cultures.

So we listen to our grant recipients and we listen to our grant applicants and let them tell us what is going to work in their region.

[00:14:30] Mariann Sullivan: Does it ever come up or do you anticipate it coming up that... maybe it doesn't because your organizations are very focused on this one issue, but that you have to make a decision about whether to support an organization that you really, cultural sensitivity aside, there are really things, you know, on feminism, homosexuality, whatever, that you really disagree with their approach on other issues, and yet they're doing good work vis a vis animals. Or are most of your organization's really focused and you don't have to figure out their position on absolutely everything on the planet.

[00:14:59] Jessika Ava: Yeah, most of the organizations we fund are focused, but we do have some groups that do a variety of work and this is something that we consider. We do have a safe space policy, for instance, and we do expect that all of our grantees will also abide by the safe space policy. So, you know, one aspect of that safe space policy is that the folks from every type of community have a safe space to be in.

So if they're working on feminist issues or other type of issues, we're also going to look and see, does this align with our values? Does this other type of work align with the values of Thrive? And if it doesn't, you know, it might not be an organization that we can partner with.

That leads into another discussion. We have to have that discussion.

[00:15:44] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, as with everything, but really, really with this, once you start digging into what you're doing here, it's an enormous job and it has many, many different facets. You mentioned that you're giving grants to a third of the countries, but how big are these grants? And just give us some examples of the organizations you're funding.

[00:16:02] Jessika Ava: So our grants range anywhere from $1,000, very small, up to $50,000. So we have a wide variety and the size of the grant, it depends on the size of the organization, depends on the project, depends on the country and so forth. So there's a lot of reasoning that goes into deciding how much to provide in that region.

And then some of the types of projects that we do, again, it varies so widely depending on the country and the culture. For instance, one project we have, we have a group in Guatemala and they are really doing very bottom up grassroots work. They're working with the women of the villages. They're creating culinary circles with women of the villages, and then these women will go on and start creating their own culinary circles and it just kind of expands from there.

And they're choosing to work with women of the villages because the women are the ones who make the decision making on what their family eats. So that's just one example. We have that. We also have organizations that are doing more larger institutional type of work. So we have organizations in Belgium and Germany and one in Czech Republic that is working with institutions to remove animal based ingredients.

So working with like catering companies and hotel chains and chain restaurants and so forth to remove animal based ingredients or to replace animal based products. Festivals are a very popular one. We have a lot of organizations who like to apply for VegFests. And VegFests are kind of interesting because they're different in every single country.

And we might think of VegFest is going to be a simple project, it's a fun event, but it can actually have a lot of impact because it brings a lot of public awareness to plant based eating, to the animals, to the environmental aspect and so forth. And festivals are fun because every single country, the festival will look different.

They'll have, you know, their traditional dance and their traditional music and show different documentary screenings or whatever it may be, but they all look a bit different depending on the country. We have a lot of organizations that are working with schools and veganizing school lunches.

We have one organization in Uganda who is actually working with single mothers and training them on tofu production. So not only are we getting support in replacing meat with eating tofu, but then we're also able to offer an income stream to these single mothers. So there's such a wide variety of tactics that we're funding right now, and it all depends on the country the culture the size of the organization and so forth.

[00:18:43] Mariann Sullivan: It's very exciting work. You mentioned that Africa is a huge focus of yours and that's clear from looking at your website. Can you tell us about how big that focus is and why you have chosen to really put a lot of your efforts into Africa.

[00:18:55] Jessika Ava: Yeah, absolutely. So, we're focusing a lot on Africa this year, and we do aim to expand into more work in Asia and Latin America over the next 2 to 3 years. But with Africa. And let me back up and also make the point that all of the Africa strategies and tactics and so forth, this is determined not by me sitting in the United States, but it's determined by our Africa based advisory committee and also our Africa based staff.

So, I just wanted to make that clear that me being a woman sitting in the United States, I'm not deciding what's going to happen in Africa. But why we decided to start the Africa work is that, in previous roles, I was observing that a lot of the capacity building work that we were doing for our grantees just wasn't relevant to the Africa context.

And I was also observing that there weren't very many grant applications that were coming from that region of the world. And that's simply because the movement was more or less non existent. It was very, very young in that region. So that's why we decided to put together various initiatives in Africa in order to help catalyze the movement there, to bring more attention to vegan advocacy work, and to also provide leadership development and training and so forth to help build up the movement there.

So the different types of Africa initiatives that we have, we first have our Thrive Africa Accelerator, which, right now we have, I believe it's at 148 members from about 16 African countries. And the Africa Accelerator, it is used to build community first, just to build community with vegan activists.

And then it's also used to provide training support, to launch certain types of campaigns and tactics, and also to just bring in new activists who are interested in this type of work. So we have our Africa Accelerator.

[00:20:50] Mariann Sullivan: Now, when you talk about an accelerator, I've always heard that word used in the context of helping businesses grow, but you're using in the context helping NGOs grow and just helping small organizations or even individual activists grow. Is that right?

[00:21:05] Jessika Ava: Absolutely. Yeah, that is the best way of putting it. Like, we're essentially providing them with management skill sets to help their organizations and help their activism grow. So absolutely. So we have the Africa Accelerator, and then we also have the Africa Vegan Women's Initiative.

And the reason that we decided to launch the Women's Initiative is because I was observing also within Africa that the majority of our grant applications that we were receiving were from male led projects. And the few women led projects that we were granteeing the women, they would do the project and then they would just kind of fall off the radar.

We'd never hear from them again. So we wanted to create a platform that brought women together that offered more leadership development and any other type of support that they would need to be able to take on more leadership roles within the plant based movement. So we launched the Africa Vegan Women's Initiative. This was launched this year, well, I guess last year now. And it was a pilot project, but even just from the first year, it did very, very well. And we actually ended up with more women based grant applications than we had ever had in the past.

I think we've tripled the number of women based projects that are being funded there. So that's our women's initiative. And then the last thing that we do in Africa is that we have pan Africa wide joint campaigns. And so these are campaigns that anyone in Africa can join, and they can do the campaign within their own specific country, do it however they like.

They can use our tools and resources, or they can use their own tools and resources. But right now, we have the Africa Vegan Restaurant Week, and then we have the Africa Vegan School Lunch Campaign. And we have about 70 organizations that are registered to do these campaigns. And again, these are campaigns that are ran by our grantees, and then also by folks who aren't our grantees as well.

And they are done across any African country. And they're able to run the campaign however they like. And so through our Africa work, we've really been able to observe the growth of the vegan movement in the continent. And although Thrive has only been around for a year, we were also doing Africa work before we launched Thrive as well.

And we kind of brought all of that over with us to Thrive. So our Africa work actually goes back a couple of years with the same team and we've been able to really see a significant growth and expansion of vegan work happening across the continent. It's been quite remarkable actually to see all the work that's been happening there and all of the attention that it's being brought to, plant based advocacy.

[00:23:52] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, even from my very distant view, I can see that because we've interviewed a number of people in Africa, I mean, including Naabasa Innocent, who I think is heading up things for you and your Africa program. Yeah. And it used to be so hard to both find people, you know, like searching the internet for people who were interested and then, you know, making sure they were legit, because we try to do some research on our guests to make sure that they are. We don't want to put them out there and tell people things that aren't real. And, and it was hard. I mean, we managed it, but it was hard. Now you have made it so easy. You have come up with all of these people who are doing amazing work and it's so easy to find them.

At the same time, it's kind of easy to look only within that vegan bubble and miss the big picture. What is the real current status and possible future for veganism or plant based or at least more animal friendly agriculture in Africa? I know there are forces fighting in the other direction as well.

[00:24:49] Jessika Ava: Yeah, absolutely. There are certainly a lot of forces fighting, fighting in the other direction.

[00:24:55] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, there always are. There always are.

[00:24:57] Jessika Ava: Unfortunately. I guess the way that I look at it is even though the work that we've done, you know, looking at the larger picture, even though it might be just a drop in the bucket, it might be very small compared to what the animal agriculture is doing.

But the way that kind of the perspective that I see on it is that we are planting all these seeds with plant based advocates across the region and then those seeds will begin to grow. They'll start expanding their organizations. More organizations will start popping up. People from universities will start going into this field of work as a career.

So we're planting all the seeds. And even though it's, it's small right now, even though what we've been able to do, we think it sounds remarkable, but in the big picture, it's actually, you know, just a drop in the bucket. But we are quite confident that it will continue to grow. Like we have to start somewhere.

We have to start somewhere. And even though the animal ag industry still has the upper hand, we have to start somewhere and we're at least like setting the foundation and supporting the growth of the movement there.

[00:25:57] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I was going to ask you about your personal theory of change, but it sounds like you might have just laid it out, that planting seeds is basically maybe a metaphor for your theory of change, is that right?

[00:26:07] Jessika Ava: Yeah. I think that's a good way of looking at it. Yeah. Like we're able to get the movement started in these regions of the world. We're able to support the early stage growth. We're able to support the organizations until they become kind of a mid-size organization. And then from there, we're able to support them as they begin to get funding from other funders and grow and develop and hire new staff and do even better work.

So, yeah, I think that's a good way of looking at it. Like we plant the seeds and then we support them as they grow and develop and do even more amazing things.

[00:26:40] Mariann Sullivan: Speaking of theories of change, we all know on an international level that the animal rights movement, which didn't use, and you've been doing this long enough so you remember it, there didn't used to be much of any money at all, and a lot more money has come into the movement, but a lot of it, really a lot of it, the effective altruism money, it's very focused on welfare improvements and putting a lot of effort into cage free campaigns, that sort of thing. So why is Thrive headed in a different direction? What's your personal feeling? I'm not asking you to go there about like, this is right and this is wrong.

I'm not asking you to do that unless you want to, of course, but why are you headed in a different direction?

[00:27:15] Jessika Ava: Yeah, we saw that there does appear to be a lot more funding going into welfare work. And I've also observed just from speaking with hundreds and hundreds of advocates outside the United States from countries everywhere, there's a lot of interest in diet change work. There's a lot of interest in work that actually overcomes industrial animal agriculture, but there's challenges with organizations and getting enough funding for it.

They tend to find, and I'm speaking in generalizations of course, but generally speaking it tends to be easier to get funding to do welfare work than to get funding to do diet change work or plant based advocacy work. So we feel like we're meeting that niche.

We felt like there was a need for more funding to go towards work that actually aims to overcome industrial animal agriculture. And so we feel like we're filling that niche and we're also supporting organizations who have a passion towards not only improving welfare standards, but to actually end the systems that create those welfare issues in the first place.

[00:28:18] Mariann Sullivan: And one of your goals, which you mentioned is to make things easier, more reliable, possible for donors. Can you just tell us a little bit more, we focused on your work and your relationships with your grantees, but what about your donors? How do you work with them?

As you said in the beginning, like a lot of organizations end up just doing what donors want to do, which, you know, we don't want philanthropy to be just that, but at the same time, it's people's money. I mean, you know, if they're going to give their money away, they want it to be for something they believe in.

So how do you work with them to make sure you're satisfying both those needs?

[00:28:52] Jessika Ava: Yeah, you know, it's challenging. There's not like a magic method. I think for us, all of my experience has been working at international philanthropy, so I think that I am able to bring in that perspective because, I mean, there's a lot of donors who have worked internationally as well, but also a lot of them have primarily focused either on the United States or Europe and essentially just Eurocentric cultures.

So I think that I'm able to bring in this perspective of, What are some of the needs in global South countries? What are some of the needs with more grassroots emerging organizations as well? So I think just having that dialogue, bringing in that perspective helps to kind of navigate it and find what is the best fit between what the donor wants, what the grantee needs, and so forth.

So it's really just, again, going back to having those authentic relationships and having these open discussions and working to navigate both of them and ensure that the donors are happy, that the donors needs are met, and then also ensure that the grantee is who we ultimately fund, ensure that all of their needs are met, and they're working as impactful as they can.

And with the donors, we have a variety of ways that we work with them. We have our grant making pool, and that's where donors are just donating directly to our grant making pool, and then Thrive itself distributes that funding, and then we also do direct recommendations. So we also work with donors and provide them a list of recommendations, and then they can determine which of those groups that they want to support. And then we also have a few other models as well, like fiscal sponsorship models and so forth. But really, you know, there's not a specific answer that I could give to your question.

It's more about, again, just having that one on one relationship, working with people just ensuring that everyone is having their needs met and ensure that they're happy with the outcomes and so forth. So I don't know if that was a satisfying answer, but it's kind of a complicated answer.

[00:30:52] Mariann Sullivan: Well, I mean, it's nice to have simple answers to everything, but there aren't always simple answers. It sounds like a lot of your work on both sides is relationship building.

[00:31:01] Jessika Ava: Absolutely. That is the best way of putting it.

[00:31:04] Mariann Sullivan: Do you ever anticipate taking donations from the general public, or are we just talking large donors?

[00:31:09] Jessika Ava: Both. Yeah, both. We can certainly take donations from the general public. And one good thing about what makes Thrive unique and what makes donating to Thrive unique is that whether you're donating $20 or, you know, $20,000, it helps to support the global movement. So whenever you're donating to Thrive, you're actually getting your funding all across the world and helping to support the movement all across the world in overcoming industrial animal agriculture.

So yes, certainly we do take funding from the general public as well.

[00:31:40] Mariann Sullivan: Before I let you go, I just wanted to go back a little bit and have you tell us a little bit more about who are the people who make up Thrive. As you mentioned, you're all women at the moment, at least your central team, BIPOC majority, but you also have a large number of advisors all over the world, I see from your website. How does that all work? And how do you draw from all of these people to get the most intelligent ways forward in all of these different cultures?

[00:32:08] Jessika Ava: Yeah, absolutely. Since we are working with grantees all across the globe, we feel like it's important that we have an international team. Whether that be our staff team, or whether it be our advisory committee as well. And so with the staff, we have staff based in various countries across the world, and they are primarily focused on the type of work that is happening within their continent, or within their own country. And then with our advisory committee, again, we have advisory committee members from all across the world and also different specialties. And then we'll reach out to them if we are looking to fund maybe an organization in a certain country, we might reach out to our advisory committee, then. Get their input on it. If we're looking to start an initiative in a certain country, we'll use the advisory committee to get their input on it. And then also the advisory committee is used to support our grantees as well.

So if we have a grantee who comes to us and they need support in grant writing or fundraising or whatever it may be, we can also tap our advisory committee and get them able to have some one on one consultation support as well. So we use the advisory committee in a multiple ways as well.

[00:33:20] Mariann Sullivan: Well, it's a complex organization. You're taking on the entire world. It used to be, you know, when people would bring up veganism they would always bring up Africa or some other place in the world that, you know, I was not particularly familiar with and just talk about how that's impossible. We're being ridiculous. There are people starving, they have to have animals, they have to have their herds. And my standard answer was always like, I live where I live and I'm dealing with the fact that animal agriculture is horrible where I live. I don't know the answers for the whole world. But you really are broadening at least the questions and many of the answers for the whole world.

And I think that's something for all of us to be grateful to, because that was a, I'm not sure that it was a gotcha question. I never felt like they got me, but they thought they did.

You have taken that vision that we actually could have a vegan world. Alright, maybe we won't. I don't know.

Like, it's a hard ask. But the idea that it's just even remotely possible is such a gift to this movement, Jessika. And you're really making that happen. You're showing it's going on everywhere. And one of the most important things I have always thought about being which I'm using as shorthand for a person who just gets it about animals, is that we are everywhere. We're a nation unto ourselves. We are everywhere. You could drop me down anywhere in the world, and if I could just manage to speak the language, I would find those people who care about animals. Like, we are everywhere, and you're finding them, and you're giving them money. So, that is really a great gift to us all.

[00:34:51] Jessika Ava: Thank you. so much, Mariann. And I do a, a funny note when you said, you know, sometimes people will come back to you about Africa and say, well, what about Africa? It's impossible. I also had that comment when we started doing Africa work, but it works. It works.

[00:35:04] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And you know, you're allowing people who actually live there and know Africa to provide some of those answers. And that's what's incredibly, incredibly valuable. So, like, we haven't had any time to talk about things that are going on in your life personally. And also the last time you were on, you talked a lot about your work in Nepal.

And I know you're about to go on a trip there. So, on the bonus, I want to get a little bit more into that personal stuff. You're just doing so much, we haven't had time in the interview, but I'm grateful to you for everything you're doing and for sharing with us today. Thanks so much.

[00:35:35] Jessika Ava: Yeah. Thank you so much, Mariann. It's been such a pleasure being on here again.