Philanthropy During COVID-19 Emergency: Towards a Postcolonial Perspective?

Abstract

AbstractCivic actors started facing an increasingly challenging context with demobilization in recent years in Brazil. In 2019, a conservative government came to power, and the beginning of the pandemic led to deepening inequalities. That was when philanthropy emerged at its strongest: over US $1 billion in private donations were mapped in only three months. This paper presents data on donations during the pandemic and contrasts selected cases with different perspectives of philanthropy. It seeks to answer whether these donations may have had an outlier content for both donors and communities. It was observed that some initiatives started to break with hegemonic models of philanthropy, however, we argue that there is still a high level of resource-dependency from elites and a coloniality of power mindset, which leaves us to the question: “To what extent is a decolonial turn in philanthropy really achievable if its origin is based on colonial thoughts?”.