A movement-rooted infrastructure experiment.
Exploring what forms of infrastructure can be shared, federated, collectively stewarded, or intentionally remain locally governed within youth-led movement ecosystems.
We are currently in Phase 1, working alongside four youth-led movement partners to explore what it takes to build movement infrastructure amid uncertainty, scarcity, and change.
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 challenge is structural. Youth-led organisations are holding the line across climate, gender justice, democracy and broader social justice movements, often operating across global networks with significant reach but lacking reserves, stable systems, or long-term operational support. In a context of shrinking civic space and constrained funding, this creates ongoing fragility beneath visible impact.
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.
Substratum responds by working at the level of experimentation to explore what shared infrastructure could be.
The Issue
Around the world, youth-led movements are being asked to solve increasingly complex crises while operating with increasingly fragile organisational foundations.
Substratum’s Five Roots - How We Explore Movement Infrastructure
Substratum’s Five Roots are interconnected areas of experimentation through which we explore movement infrastructure alongside youth-led movements.
Phase 1: Experimentation (2026 - 2027)
We are currently working alongside our inaugural Youth Movement Cohort to explore what forms of infrastructure can be shared, federated, collectively stewarded, or intentionally remain locally governed within youth-led movement ecosystems.
We are currently:
Working alongside four youth-led movement partners
Exploring shared infrastructure through practice and experimentation
Developing the Resilience Reserve
Advancing research on care as organisational infrastructure
Publishing reflections and learning as the experimentation unfolds
Who We Are
Substratum is a movement-rooted infrastructure initiative shaped by practitioners, advisors, researchers, and youth-led movement partners. Together we bring experience across feminist philanthropy, climate justice, organisational development, collective governance, systems design, and care as infrastructure.
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