Building the infrastructure beneath youth-led movements.
Substratum exists to build the hidden scaffolding of youth-led movements: shared systems, emergency reserves, and collective infrastructure that help movements endure pressure, transition, and uncertainty.
Currently in Phase 1: working with a small cohort of youth-led movements to experiment and co-create shared infrastructure.
We are currently in conversation with funders, movement organisations, and collaborators exploring shared infrastructure.
Substratum:
In nature, the substratum is the unseen layer that holds everything together, the soil beneath the soil, where roots take hold and ecosystems endure.
The Issue
Youth-led movements are holding the line on climate justice, democracy, and human rights, often without the systems in place to sustain them.
Across climate, feminist, LGBTQIA+, and broader justice movements, youth-led organisations are carrying extraordinary responsibility. Yet many operate without reserves, reliable finance and HR systems, MEL capacity, or transition support.
The result is familiar: burnout, funding cliffs, duplicated labour, and avoidable organisational fragility beneath the visible impact of movement.
What is needed is not more projects, but to hold the risk of experimentation on shared infrastructure that can hold risk, reduce duplication, and allow youth movements to endure over time.
What Substratum is Building
Substratum is a movement-rooted infrastructure experiment.
It combines shared systems, reserves, governance, care, and practice-based research to test what it takes to build infrastructure that can hold over time
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Resilience Reserve
A pooled reserve providing emergency and core support to help youth-led movements navigate shocks, funding gaps, and transitions.
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Co-Governance
Participatory design, advisory structures, and open-source learning shaped with youth-led movements.
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Shared Systems
Light-touch experimentation around finance, HR, and MEL systems that reduce burden and rebuild trust.
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Regenerating Care
Leadership support, peer learning, and transition planning treated as core infrastructure, not as an add-on.
Across All Areas: Research and Development
An ongoing inquiry into what it takes to build infrastructure that can hold movements over time.
Substratum integrates practice-based learning with research on care, systems, and organisational design, treating experimentation, reflection, and adaptation as core to the work rather than an afterthought.
Where We Are Now
Substratum is currently in early Phase 1 (2026–2027). We are moving slowly and intentionally, grounded in listening, experimentation, and collaboration.
We are currently:
Working with a small group of youth-led movement partners
Designing the Resilience Reserve
Shaping an experimentation space for shared infrastructure
Building relationships with aligned funders, advisors, and collaborators
Developing research on care as an integral part of organisational infrastructure
Who We Are
Substratum is being shaped by movement practitioners, advisors, and youth-led partners with experience across feminist philanthropy, climate justice, people and culture, collective governance, and infrastructure design.
Uma Mishra-Newbery — Founder and Lead Strategist
Darcelle Lewis — Advisor, people and culture / somatic care
María Alejandra Escalante — Advisor, climate justice and new economic models
Erix Cortés — Advisor, feminist learning and movement resourcing