Hi everyone. My name is Caroline Oliveira. I’m the Development Director of Sinergia Animal, and this is my first EA Forum post. 

I’m delighted to share that Sinergia Animal has just been recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators for the seventh year in a row. 

The latest analysis suggests our work impacts 113 million farmed animals every year. But when we attend conferences, we find that a lot of EAs haven’t heard of us. So we’ve come here to introduce ourselves - and raise awareness of the unique, impactful donation opportunity that we offer. 

We’re not eligible for the donation election, because we aren’t registered in the UK or the US. However, with giving season on the Forum well underway, we thought now was a good time to throw our hat in the ring. 

Who are we?

Sinergia Animal is an international farmed animal protection organization. We operate exclusively in the Global South - and almost all our team members grew up in the countries where they work. 

There are 54 of us. That sounds like a big team, but when they’re spread across 6 countries and operating in 9, it isn’t a lot. 

And yet last year, that team won a campaign almost every week.  

How do we help 113 million animals per year?

• We do a lot of corporate campaigning. Last year, we achieved 49 commitments, mostly focused on getting hens and pigs out of cages.
• We encourage and equip institutions to swap animal-based meals for plant-based alternatives - on a massive scale. Last year, we achieved 25 commitments amounting to almost 1 million meals replaced per year.
• We campaign for systemic changes to the food system, by pushing development banks to stop financing factory farming and pursuing the enforcement of local legislation to protect farmed animals, e.g. to live animal transport in Colombia.

Every $1 you donate to Sinergia Animal impacts*:

• Freeing approximately 53 hens from cages, or
• Liberating 21 mother pigs (or 354 piglets) from brutal confinement and painful procedures, or
• Replacing three animal-based meals with plant-based options.

*source: ACE 

Our strengths

We are committed to evidence 

Our strategy is dictated by evidence and experience; we will change course, even when it’s difficult, to improve our results. 

Examples:

• We stopped running our vegan challenges because they focused on changing individuals, instead of institutions, thus being less cost effective than our other programs.
• We restructured the organization, hiring national directors in each country, once it became clear that national teams performed better and with more agility under this structure.
• Nourishing Tomorrow - our institutional diet change program - started as a small pilot in Colombia only. After we saw promising results, and ACE estimated the program to have high cost-effectiveness in 2022, we pivoted to give more resources to the campaign and expanded it to Argentina and Indonesia. 

Our Global South focus

"Sinergia appears to have strategically chosen countries where there are a very high number of farmed animals and where the movement is currently relatively neglected, thereby filling a potentially extremely impactful role in the global animal advocacy movement."

• 2024 ACE review

We are proud to run programs exclusively in the Global South - with leaders who are from the Global South. 

Our knowledge of the countries we work in contributes to the effectiveness of our programs. For example, in Indonesia, after our Diet Change program was not successful with educational institutions, we started working with community organizations and catering companies and we were able to improve reach and effectiveness significantly. 

Collaboration makes us stronger

We are proud to work in coalition with some of the greatest animal protection organizations in the world, such as the Open Wing Alliance and many of its members. Since our creation, our mission has been related to our name: Synergy (Sinergia). This means that Sinergia Animal is focused on developing synergies with other animal protection organizations, as well as other social movements.

What would we do with marginal funding?

“Sinergia’s plans for how they’d spend additional funding across 2025 and 2026 give us confidence that they would use donations in ways that likely create the most positive change for farmed animals.”

• ACE review, 2024

Our funding gap for 2025-6 is $800,000, as reported by ACE.  With that extra funding, we would:

• Growing our institutional diet change program, swapping millions more animal-based meals for plant-based alternatives.
• Expand our movement building program in six countries.
• Run lobbying initiatives in six countries, with the aim of achieving huge wins affecting thousands of animals within the next five years.
• More

3 reasons to donate to us (and 2 reasons not to)

Why donate:

• We are building the movement against factory farming in countries where there are a lot of farmed animals, but few animal advocates.
• We operate in countries where fundraising is hard, and the amounts raised are small.
• All donations made between now and the end of the year will be matched. This is a real match; we won’t get the money if we don’t meet the target. 

Why not:

• We are not a registered charity in the UK, so your donations will not be tax effective. However, we are currently identifying donation swap opportunities that would enable UK donors to give effectively. Please contact us if you are interested.
• We recognise that all other ACE recommended charities do incredible work for the animals. We recognize making this choice is hard - and we encourage donations to all of them.

Give effectively

You can donate to us tax effectively in:

• The US. Give via CAF America or ACE.
• Canada. Give via CAF Canada.