On the World
I
2016
I
Film
Namuli
I am not from Mozambique. I don't speak Portuguese. I was born in Minnesota. I own a poodle. I was never certified to dream up the story I'm about to tell you.
Released to over 50 international film festivals and broadcast across the US on PBS. Watch now.
To me, Mount Namuli started as something to climb. The idea was unconventional enough on its own: bring an international team of climbers and scientists to one of Mozambique's least explored mountains, use climbing to reach habitats that had barely been studied, and see what we could find.
But Namuli refused to stay a climbing story.
The mountain is the ancestral homeland of the Lomwe people, a place of extraordinary biological importance, and a landscape under growing pressure. The longer I spent there, the harder it became to separate any of it. Forest loss affected water. Water affected agriculture and livelihoods. Conservation could not happen without understanding what the people living there needed. And scientific knowledge meant very little if it could not help support the future of the place itself.
We are tethered to the mountains, all of us. We all have a stake, and we're tethered to the same thing.
So the expedition became something else. In May 2014 I led an eighteen-person team up Namuli, and Kate Rutherford and I established the first technical route on the wall so the scientists could reach what no one had sampled. Climbing, science, conservation, and community, all trying to occupy the same frame.
We did make a remarkable discovery, though not where we expected. After hauling scientists up a 2,000-foot face in search of undocumented species, we found the expedition's biggest one while cleaning out the cook tent on a rest day: a caecilian, the southernmost ever recorded. Discoveries don't always happen where you plan them.
But the discovery that stayed with me was larger. I had arrived thinking I could bring the pieces together. Namuli taught me that the pieces were already connected. That is where Legado began.
The team
Kate Rutherford, climber
Flavia Esteves, entomologist
Caswell Munyai, entomologist
Harith Farooq, herpetologist
Geraldo Palalane, conservationist
and the Lomwe community of Namuli.
Directed by Majka Burhardt, Sarah Garlick, and Paul Yoo.
Recognitions
Thriving Futures. Thriving Planet.
Thriving Futures is the methodology behind Legado: a 360-Thriving approach that helps communities define their own priorities and turn them into lasting, institutionally-backed action. Proven across three continents and a decade of testing.
A plan communities didn't write is a plan they won't carry. With Thriving Futures, communities define their own future — and gives those walking alongside them a clear way to support that journey without taking it over. Thriving Futures doesn't stop at a diagnosis or a plan — it closes the loop: 90% of community priorities are taken up by local government or institutions, and 97% secure follow-on funding. Rooted in place, culture, and community. Realized through institutions, funding, and results that last.
Because justice and effectiveness are inseparable.
