Ana Maria Gonzalez-Forero

Chief Sustainability Officer, Fundación por la Educación Multidimensional (FEM)

COLOMBIA

For more than 25 years, Ana Maria Gonzalez-Forero has worked on organizing and advocating for the rights of local indigenous communities in Colombia. Through her work with FEM, Ana helps rural ethnic communities secure their land ownership, self governance, and resource allotment rights which are guaranteed in Colombia’s National Development Plan. In the last four years FEM has helped several communities obtain their ethnic rights, strengthened the Zenu people organization by helping create ATINAZ -- an association of 120 indigenous Zenu families that live as urban migrants in Cartagena, and helped the Inga Indigenous Community received their ethnic recognition documents after a 30-year legal battle.