We recently connected with Anna Ferreira and have shared our conversation below.

Anna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is co-founding OGA, Opportunities for Grassroots Action, where I serve as President and Movement Co-Weaver. It’s pro bono, and it’s everything.

The backstory: I started working young, 13, across Brazil, the SWANA region, and Spain. Years in corporate hospitality taught me how international business works, but also showed me what’s missing. The people closest to problems are usually the farthest from resources and power. Working alongside BIPOC and sieged communities, I saw that real change doesn’t come from top-down programs. It comes from showing up. Reciprocity. True kinship.

So in August 2025, we built OGA. It’s a translocal nonprofit connecting grassroots initiatives across the Global Majority. No saviors. Just co-weaving, helping communities share strategies, resources, and solidarity without intermediaries extracting value along the way.

Right now I’m coordinating programs across continents, supporting governance and fundraising, making sure we stay accountable to the people we’re meant to serve. One current project: collecting electronic devices for Brazilian indigenous populations. Small act. Big meaning.

Why it matters: Because caring deeply about Gaza, the Amazon, racial equity, the planet doesn’t have to be lonely work. We just have to find the others who feel it too.

There’s a Xhosa proverb: “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu.” A person is a person through people. That’s not just philosophy at OGA. It’s how we operate.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m proudest of the work that doesn’t look like work on paper. The 3am WhatsApp messages with a Palestinian student trying to finish an assignment while the lights are out. The hours spent figuring out how to get laptops to an indigenous territory where the postal system doesn’t go. The slow, invisible labor of holding space for people who’ve been told their voices don’t matter.

My brand, if we have to call it that, is simply this: I show up. Not when it’s convenient, not when there’s a contract, not when the spotlight’s on. I show up because we belong to each other.

What I want you to know: I’m not a savior. I’m not here to rescue anyone or speak for anyone. I’m here to use what I have, languages, access, decades of navigating power structures, to make sure those who should be heard actually are. I translate in both directions: for communities trying to access systems, and for systems trying to pretend they care.

If you’re doing work that’s real, work that shifts power, that listens before acting, that understands liberation isn’t a grant cycle, I’m your person. Not because I’m special. Because I’ve spent my whole life learning how to be useful without taking up space. That’s the offer.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

The thing non-creatives often struggle to understand is that the work they can’t see is still work.

The hours I spend just listening. The relationships maintained for years with no immediate outcome. The way I hold stories that aren’t mine, knowing I’ll never tell them but they still take up space in my body. The emotional labor of moving between worlds, corporate boardrooms and grassroots gatherings, translating not just words but entire ways of being, and coming home exhausted even when I haven’t “produced” anything.

They want to measure. Hours logged. Deliverables submitted. Lines translated. But so much of what I do doesn’t fit on a spreadsheet. The trust that gets built over months of silence. The moment someone finally says the thing they’ve never said aloud because they sense you’re safe. The knowing when to step forward and when to step back, when to speak and when to make space.

This work is creative because it’s about making something that didn’t exist before: connection across chasms. Understanding across centuries of harm. A bridge sturdy enough to hold weight but flexible enough to move with the people crossing.

You can’t invoice for that. But without it, nothing else holds.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

There’s a specific goal driving me now that OGA is legalized: I want to use the skills I spent decades building in corporate spaces and turn them fully toward movements that actually shift power.

I handled millions in portfolios before. Hotel contracts, global accounts, revenue targets. I negotiated deals that moved money across continents. I know how systems track, measure, and move resources. I know the language funders speak, the boxes they need checked, the difference between a proposal that gets read and one that gets funded.

Now I want to do that for the work that matters. For OGA, yes. For Language for Justice, where we taught foundational concepts to Palestinian students and built solidarity across borders. For the Yanomami women’s association protecting their territory and their people in the Amazon. For grassroots initiatives across the Global Majority doing the work no one funds because it doesn’t fit neat categories. The ones saving lives without a line item for overhead. The ones in Gaza right now, surviving, resisting, rebuilding with nothing.

Grants are the bridge. Not because funding is the answer, but because movements need resources to survive while they do the slow, invisible work of building something else. I’ve sat on both sides now, the corporate and the grassroots. I know how to translate between them. I know what due diligence actually requires and what’s just performance.

The goal is simple: move money where it matters. Not with charity energy, but with the same rigor I used when millions were on the line. Because they still are. Just different millions. Different stakes. Same commitment to making sure resources land where they’re meant to, with the people who’ve earned the right to decide what happens next.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ogaweb.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oga.web/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-ferreira5/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OGAWeb

Image Credits

Personal photos