--- title: TIME100 Philanthropy: María José Iturralde description: Find out why María José Iturralde is on the TIME100 Most Influential People in Philanthropy 2025 list. canonical: https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286056/maria-jose-iturralde/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-05-20T11:31:35.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-03T00:48:54.852Z og:title: TIME100 Philanthropy: María José Iturralde og:description: Find out why María José Iturralde is on the TIME100 Most Influential People in Philanthropy 2025 list. og:url: https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286056/maria-jose-iturralde/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte839d9d6c66511f9/6998c6bf1f6709f88ff5664c/T100PHIL-Trail-Maria-Jose-Chochi-Iturralde.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME100 Philanthropy: María José Iturralde og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: TIME100 Philanthropy: María José Iturralde twitter:description: Find out why María José Iturralde is on the TIME100 Most Influential People in Philanthropy 2025 list. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte839d9d6c66511f9/6998c6bf1f6709f88ff5664c/T100PHIL-Trail-Maria-Jose-Chochi-Iturralde.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- May 20, 2025 # María José Iturralde Saving the Amazon rainforest by [Harry Booth](/author/harry-booth/) ## Harry Booth Booth is a reporter at TIME.  Courtesy Ricardo Jaramillo The destruction of the Amazon rainforest often perplexes outsiders, who might attribute it solely to corporate greed. But for many forest inhabitants, there are often “literally no other alternatives to make money” but by clearing land for cash crops, says María José Iturralde, executive director of Fundación Pachaysana, an Ecuadorian nonprofit that partners with Indigenous communities to restore the rainforest. Iturralde is flipping that script. In 2019, Fundación Pachaysana launched its Humans for Abundance program, a radical intervention that involves paying locals to become stewards and restorers of their ancestral lands. Today, 12 families receive monthly paychecks to collectively revitalize 370 acres of what was once farmland and protect another 740 acres of pristine forest. For Iturralde, the mission is personal. Her grandfather, the former president of Ecuador, signed a resolution while he was in power that absolved Texaco, a U.S. oil company, from responsibility for dumping billions of gallons of toxic wastewater into the rainforest, contaminating an estimated two million acres. Iturralde says. “I feel like my own grandfather is righting the wrongs through me.” Through the foundation, Iturralde, a former teacher, also operates the Forest School, which teaches local children Indigenous knowledge and promotes the ecological value of the Amazon, cultivating the next generation of restorers. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286056/maria-jose-iturralde/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286056/maria-jose-iturralde/"},"headline":"María José Iturralde","datePublished":"2025-05-20T11:31:35.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:48:54.852Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286056/maria-jose-iturralde/","keywords":["list","franchise"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte839d9d6c66511f9/6998c6bf1f6709f88ff5664c/T100PHIL-Trail-Maria-Jose-Chochi-Iturralde.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Harry Booth","jobTitle":"Booth is a reporter at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/harry-booth/"}],"creator":"Harry Booth","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte839d9d6c66511f9/6998c6bf1f6709f88ff5664c/T100PHIL-Trail-Maria-Jose-Chochi-Iturralde.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286056/maria-jose-iturralde/","name":"María José Iturralde"}}]}] ```