Umbela
Umbela is a non-profit organization that aims to foster territorial transformations toward sustainable futures through innovation for collaborative spaces to articulate the diversity of knowledge, cultures, approaches, and expertise that contribute to developing and enhancing conditions of well-being, justice, and equity in society and the environment.
Our main interest is to question, explore, and create new ways of understanding the world in order to find solutions to the problems of the territories that currently threaten the sustainability
of life on Earth.
We know there is a collective will that believes change is possible, we want to contribute to that change by seeking new meanings and understandings, deconstructing and reconstructing through the projects we collaborate on.
Vision
Our greatest interest is to question, explore, and create new ways of understanding the world to find solutions to the social environmental problems that currently threaten the sustainability of life on Earth.
Mission
Accompany and weave collective processes that question the structures that sustain inequality and environmental degradation, creating horizontal meeting spaces where diverse knowledge and struggles are recognized and strengthened to promote transformations towards just, equitable and sustainable futures.
Positionality
At Umbela, we start from the recognition that the hierarchical structure of the current hegemonic system does not allow for a comprehensive approach to the multiple crises facing the world. This system renders biological, cultural, and social diversity invisible—including inequalities of class, gender, ethnicity, and culture—and devalues the resistance and regeneration movements that seek to protect that diversity. Furthermore, we understand that historical processes such as colonization, extractivism, racism, and sexism have produced profound structural inequality, marginalizing groups whose voices have been systematically excluded from spaces of power and decision-making. Often, the ideas and knowledge of these groups have been appropriated, decontextualized, and commodified, erasing their political origins, history, and struggle.
Given this situation, at Umbela we are committed to promoting profound transformations that foster more just, equitable, and sustainable conditions and trajectories. These transformations involve radically changing the paradigms, values, practices, and norms that sustain inequalities and socio-environmental degradation. To achieve this, it is necessary to openly question and challenge the structures and narratives that have become normalized—such as colonial practices, extractivism, injustices, and excessive consumption—and to open spaces for dialogue where the legitimacy of multiple forms of knowledge is recognized. We believe in creating horizontal and respectful dialogues that value situated knowledge, its contexts of origin, its authorship, and its struggles.
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Justice
We believe that the nature-human duality in the Anthropocene era has led to the dispossession of resources, territories, and knowledge, and we therefore seek to foster participatory and self-governance spaces that create conditions for greater justice.
Equity
We promote schemes that address asymmetries and make visible the narratives and dynamics of marginalization to foster current and future conditions of social well-being.
Plurality
We see territories as places where all living beings and their interrelationships have the same level of importance, and therefore deserve the same respect and empathy.
Universal respect
We recognize and celebrate the diversity of contexts and ways of knowing and feeling the world, and the rights of all life forms (present and future generations) from a perspective of social vindication and ecological balance.