Our Roots
the foundation of our work and the people Guiding and driving our programs and advocacies
Atty. Leilene Marie Carantes-Gallardo
Leilene Marie Carantes-Gallardo belongs to the Ibaloi indigenous cultural community of Baguio-Benguet. She presently works as a public prosecutor with the Dept. Of Justice, Philippines and is a certified vinyasa yoga instructor. Previously, in her 15 years of government service as Regional and Bureau Director of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) she managed the titling of numerous ancestral domains in Benguet and the Visayan Region in the Philippines and in the formulation of indigenous peoples’ ancestral domain sustainable development protection plans (ADSDPP). As NCIP Bureau Director she focused on Policy analysis and formulation on indigenous peoples as basis for issuance by the Commission of implementing guidelines such as on Indigenous Political Structures and the Registration of Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and Promoting the Community Intellectual Property Rights of indigenous peoples.
Inspired by her previous engagements as NCIP representative working with various NGOs on the Philippine National REDD plus Strategic Framework (PNRPS) on carbon ownership and biodiversity concerns and growing up in her younger years on an ancestral farm, she pursued a Diplomate on Environment and Natural Resource Management with the University of the Philippines Open University and now aspires to pursue her dream of becoming a farmer.
Philippines Address
Our local staff work remotely
from various parts of the Philippines (Benguet, Cebu).
To contact our Philippines team, fill up this contact form.
US Address
Located at
The Posner Center
for International Development
1031 33rd Street, Ste. 174
Denver, CO 80205
info@globalseedsavers.org
Our US offices are based in Denver, Colorado, which is the land of the Cheyenne and Arapaho and 48 other Indigenous Tribes and Nations who call Colorado home. They are the original Stewards of this stolen land and it is because of their successes and continued hardships that we are able to engage in our collective work of restoring the indigenous practice of saving seeds.