EntreMundos is a Guatemalan NGO founded in 2001 that works across three core areas: capacity building through its training program, volunteering through its volunteer program, and communications, including a magazine, podcast, and book clubs. For over 25 years, a central focus of their work has been strengthening grassroots groups and organizations through capacity development. Over the years, EntreMundos has accompanied hundreds of grassroots organizations, giving them a unique vantage point on how sustained capacity support can strengthen emerging groups and enable long-term organizational growth.
In this Insight, Yessica Pastor, Director of EntreMundos, reflects on both the organization’s experience accompanying grassroots partners and their own journey receiving funding and support. She describes how capacity-focused funding enabled her team to strengthen their internal practices and improve their work, with ripple effects across the broader ecosystem they are part of.
A key milestone she highlights is receiving funding to develop EntreMundos’ first strategic plan. This process provided clarity, direction, and motivation, and later informed the creation of operational plans. Importantly, she shares that EntreMundos was able to replicate this learning with grassroots partners, extending the impact beyond the organization itself.
Yessica emphasizes the importance of follow-up funding for capacity building, noting that learning processes require time and continuity. Additional support allowed her team to apply new knowledge, deepen skills, and move into subsequent stages of organizational strengthening.
She also highlights the role of funding and accompaniment in enabling collective learning. With funder support, a group of organizations engaged in cross-learning and collaboration that ultimately evolved into an autonomous learning network (RED MAIIS). Yessica describes this approach as both innovative and transformative, offering efficient access to training while creating a peer space for mutual support, diverse perspectives, and shared experience.
Another form of support she found impactful was funding to participate in convenings and sector events, including the Shift the Power Summit in Bogotá and the Central American Donors Forum in Guatemala City. These opportunities strengthened her confidence, public speaking, and networking skills while enabling EntreMundos to contribute grassroots perspectives to sector conversations on trust and power dynamics in philanthropy.
Throughout the conversation, Yessica underscores the value of feeling genuinely accompanied by funders. Rather than hierarchical relationships centered on supervision, she describes supportive partnerships grounded in trust, openness, and shared understanding; relationships where challenges, fears, ideas, and aspirations can be discussed transparently.
Finally, she reflects on a gradual shift in funder relationships toward greater recognition of qualitative dimensions of their work. This growing appreciation for learning, relationships, and less tangible outcomes has felt both affirming and better aligned with the nature of EntreMundos’ practice.
About the speaker:
Yessica Pastor
Yessica Pastor is a Local Environmental Management Engineer and a professional with more than ten years of experience in organizational leadership within the social sector. She has led projects, managed resources, and strengthened institutional processes in nonprofit organizations, with a focus on strategic planning, project monitoring, and financial sustainability. She holds a Project DPro certification in project management and has specialized training in leadership and organizational development.
Learn more about EntreMundos: https://entremundos.org/
