What Youth-Led Movements Told Us They Need

In what feels like never-ending moments when human rights are under attack, solidarity calls us to gather, to strategise, and to build differently.

At Women Deliver this year, thousands of movement advocates, organisers, and funders are coming together across movements, regions, and generations to ask what it will take to resist, reimagine, and rebuild towards a more just and feminist future.

And within that gathering, one reality is increasingly clear:

Youth-led movements are holding the line

across climate, justice, and democracy.

Yet many are doing so without the systems, reserves, or support needed to sustain that work.

Substratum exists to nourish and build that missing layer.

But before we even started building, we listened (more below).

📍 At Women Deliver #WD2026

This year, Substratum will be present at Women Deliver—our only conference engagement this year.

If you are in Narrm (Melbourne), we would welcome the opportunity to connect.

We are currently in conversation with:

• Funders interested in shared infrastructure and ecosystem support work

• Youth movement organisations navigating sustainability and systems gaps

• Partners exploring collaboration or field-building roles

→ Will you be at WD2026? Say hello!
→ Interested in partnering? Book a conversation.
→ Or read more about our vision and work below.

Listening in a Time of Constriction

Over the past six months, we have been in conversation with youth-led funds and intermediaries to understand what is already felt and known from within their work. Some of the questions we asked included:

• Where are the pressure points?

• What is holding everything together?

• Who or what is at risk of breaking?

We did not conduct a traditional needs assessment; instead, we developed mini-organisational assessments to fully understand where the gaps in infrastructure actually lie.

Through this intentional listening work, we are building Substratum from lived reality rather than from assumptions.

What We Are Hearing

Across every conversation with youth-led movements (spanning climate, LGBTQIA+, and feminist organising), the pattern was consistent:

There are major structural gaps.

All youth-led movements we spoke with named the same reality: core infrastructure (HR, finance, MEL, reserves, leadership transitions) is under-resourced or absent. This is not a secondary issue but a defining constraint that youth-led movements constantly navigate as they hold the line on democracy and human rights.

There is strong appetite for shared infrastructure.

Every youth-led movement expressed openness to a model like Substratum, one that reduces duplication and offers practical, ongoing support. However, the space for experimentation (i.e., trial and failure), the resourcing of this experimentation, and the human sweat capacity (i.e., time and energy) of youth movement leaders are limited.

What Infrastructure Support Youth-Movements told us is needed:

• Finance and budgeting systems

• HR structures and team culture support

• Monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL)

• Emergency reserves and crisis response

• Strategic planning and leadership transitions support

• Risk management and donor compliance

These infrastructure elements are not nice-to-haves for youth-led movements. They are what allow movements to continue and ultimately thrive.

In the process of listening, there were also important questions raised by youth-led movements:

• Can shared infrastructure be sustained over time?

• How does it adapt across legal, cultural, and regional contexts?

• What is the real-time cost for already stretched teams?

• How do smaller or nationally focused organisations fit?

These questions are not barriers. They are design conditions that require space to experiment, to dialogue, to dream, and to weave possibilities together.

What We Are Building Now

In response, Substratum is moving into Phase 1 (2026–2027), and we will be working with a small group of youth-led movements to co-create:

• A small pooled Resilience Reserve (emergency + core support)

• A shared experimentation space focused on building one of the following: finance, HR, or MEL systems

• Pro-bono infrastructure support provided by Substratum for 1 immediate or critical infrastructure challenge that each youth movement in our cohort is facing.

• The creation of a youth-movement Leadership Council in which dialogue, practice, experimentation, and the weaving of care and community are central to long-term human and youth-movement sustainability.

Substratum is not a program. It is an intentional infrastructure experiment designed to stabilise and sustain youth-led movement ecosystems over time.

Why This Matters

Across the sector, we are seeing the same pattern:

Strong youth-led movements operating without reserves, at near-critical risk of human burnout.

Carrying structural risk.
Absorbing instability.

In a moment where movements are being asked to do more with less, and under greater pressure, this gap becomes more acute.

Substratum responds to this as a portfolio-level challenge, not an individual organisational one.

It offers a way to:

• Reduce risk across ecosystems

• Strengthen continuity through transitions and funding gaps

• Shift from short-term support to long-term stability

Or simply:

to fund the roots, not just the branches.

Where We Are

We are currently:

• Selecting a first cohort of youth-led movement partners (across climate, feminist, and LGBTQI+ movements)

• Designing the structure of the experimentation space.

• Building relationships with aligned funders and collaborators

Phase 1 is intentionally small: Focused on learning, co-creation, and building something that can withstand and support the space necessary for experimentation, practice, and solidarity.

We keep weaving, under the soil

Women Deliver asks what it means to shift power in this moment.

For Substratum, much of that answer is structural.

It is about building the systems beneath movements, so they are not constantly rebuilding under pressure.

The need is clear. The work now is to build something that can hold.

With care,
Uma