Over the past few months, Substratum has moved from listening and design into practice.

Our first Youth Movement Cohort is underway, bringing together four youth-led movements to explore what forms of organisational infrastructure can be shared, federated, or collectively stewarded and under what conditions.

As the experimentation begins, we are also thinking intentionally about the ecology of people who accompany the work: people who can help us notice what we might otherwise miss, bring perspectives from other disciplines and movement ecosystems, challenge our assumptions, and help us learn from what emerges.

This month, we are inviting people into that ecology in two different ways.

🌱 Join the Substratum Advisory Ecology

We are growing our Advisory Ecology and looking to welcome a small number of new advisors to accompany Substratum’s next phase of experimentation.

Our advisors are not a governing board. They are companions to the work: people who bring experience, questions, relationships, and perspectives that can help us think more expansively about the infrastructure movements need to organise, adapt, and endure.

We are particularly interested in hearing from people working across:

🌿 Philanthropy

🌿 Research & academia

🌿 Adjacent infrastructure ecosystems, including disability justice, racial justice, Indigenous organising, digital infrastructure and technology, mutual aid, cooperative economics, care infrastructure, and related fields.

We are deliberately looking beyond any single sector because we believe some of the most important learning about infrastructure may already be happening elsewhere.

A quick snapshot:

🌱 Volunteer Advisor — The Substratum Initiative
📍 Virtual
🗓️ Annual appointment, reviewed each year
⏱️ Approximately 10–15 hours per year
💬 Four quarterly advisory conversations, with light pre-reading
📥 Expressions of interest close 31 August 2026

One of our current advisors recently reflected:

“The advisory space doesn't simply talk about intentional practice, co-creation, or shared stewardship; it actively embodies those values. In many ways, it feels like living a small piece of the future we hope to create.”

— Maria Alejandra Escalante, Substratum Advisor

Read the full Call for Advisors and learn how to express your interest →

And if someone comes immediately to mind as you read this, we would be grateful if you shared the call with them.

⏳ Final Day: Research, Learning & Methodology Partner

Today, 10 August, is the final day to apply (by end of day) to become Substratum’s first Research, Learning & Methodology Partner.

This is also the first public consultancy opportunity we have shared.

As our first phase of experimentation unfolds, we want someone alongside us who can help us notice, synthesise, question, document, and learn from what emerges.

Importantly, this is not a traditional MEL consultancy.

We are not looking for someone to evaluate the youth-led organisations participating in the cohort or build another system of indicators and reporting requirements.

Instead, we are looking for a thought partner who can help Substratum ask better questions, strengthen our emerging methodology, weave together different forms of knowledge, and begin building an institutional memory from this first phase of experimentation.

A quick snapshot:

🌱 Research, Learning & Methodology Partner
📍 Remote
🗓️ August 2026 – July 2027
⏱️ Approximately 20–25 consultancy days over one year
💰 Budget: Up to USD $10,000
🚀 Anticipated start: Week of 17 August
📥 Applications close today, 10 August 2026

We are particularly interested in people with experience in qualitative or participatory research, organisational or movement learning, developmental evaluation or action research, feminist or community-led methodologies, and synthesising complexity into useful learning.

Read the full Terms of Reference and application details →

Building the Conditions Around the Work

These two invitations are different in scope and commitment, but they emerge from the same underlying belief.

Experimentation does not happen in isolation.

It requires people willing to accompany uncertainty. People who can bring different bodies of knowledge into conversation. People who can ask difficult questions without demanding premature answers. And people who can help us recognise what we are learning while we are still in the process of learning it.

As our Youth Movement Cohort begins its first experimentation spaces this month, we are excited to keep building those conditions around the work.

Whether you apply for the consultancy, express interest in joining the Advisory Ecology, share one of these opportunities with someone in your community, or simply continue following and questioning alongside us, thank you for journeying with Substratum.

There is much more to come.

With gratitude,

Uma