A movement-rooted infrastructure experiment.
Exploring what forms of organisational infrastructure can be shared, federated, collectively stewarded, or intentionally remain locally governed within youth-led movement ecosystems.
We are currently in Phase 1, experimenting alongside four youth-led movement partners to understand how organisational infrastructure can be developed, sustained and adapted to the realities of movement work.
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
Around the world, youth-led movements are being asked to respond to increasingly complex crises while operating with organisational foundations that have not been adequately resourced to sustain their work.
Across climate, gender justice, democracy, and broader social justice movements, youth-led organisations carry significant responsibilities, often across global networks, without the reserves, stable systems, or long-term operational support needed to meet those demands.
In a context of shrinking civic space and constrained funding, this creates ongoing fragility beneath visible impact. The challenge is not simply a lack of resources for activities, but a lack of investment in the organisational infrastructure that enables movements to endure, adapt and flourish.
What is needed is not simply more projects, but the space and resources to experiment with forms of infrastructure that can hold risk, reduce duplication and strengthen movement continuity.
Substratum responds by working alongside youth-led movements to explore what infrastructure can be shared, collectively stewarded or locally governed — and what it takes to build and sustain it.
Substratum’s Five Roots - How We Work
The Five Roots describe how we currently organise our work across five interconnected areas of experimentation: Anchoring, Reserving, Co-creating, Sustaining, and Research & Learning.
Rather than separate programmes or predetermined solutions, they provide a strategic framework for exploring, developing and testing movement infrastructure alongside youth-led organisations. As the experimentation unfolds, these areas of work may evolve in response to what we learn.
Practice & Inquiry
Learning from practice. Questioning assumptions. Developing new possibilities for movement infrastructure.
Our work brings together movement knowledge, existing scholarship and organisational experimentation to explore the conditions that enable youth-led movements to organise, adapt and endure.
Through emerging frameworks, research and practice-based reflections, we share what we are learning, the questions we are holding and the ideas we continue to test and refine.
Phase 1: Experimentation (2026 - 2027)
Through our inaugural Youth Movement Cohort, Substratum is working alongside four youth-led movement organisations to understand the organisational conditions, systems and relationships that enable movements to sustain their work.
This first phase brings together organisational inquiry, practical experimentation and collective learning. Rather than beginning with predetermined infrastructure solutions, we are working with the youth movement cohort to identify priorities, test approaches and examine what can be strengthened, shared or developed differently.
Our work currently includes:
Organisational inquiry and accompaniment: Working alongside four youth-led movement partners to understand their existing infrastructure, priorities and challenges, and identify opportunities for experimentation.
Infrastructure experimentation: Exploring and testing approaches to organisational systems, shared resources, governance and other forms of infrastructure that respond to movement-defined needs.
Pro bono organisational support: Providing targeted, practical support to youth-led organisations facing immediate infrastructure challenges, drawing on specialist expertise and collaborative problem-solving.
Research and learning: Advancing inquiry into care as organisational infrastructure, while documenting the insights, tensions and questions emerging from practice.
Collective reflection and knowledge sharing: Creating spaces for partners to learn together and sharing emerging insights with the wider movement and philanthropic ecosystem.
Who We Are
Substratum is shaped by a growing ecology of practitioners, researchers, advisors and youth-led movement partners. Together, we bring experience across feminist philanthropy, climate justice, organisational development, collective governance, systems design and care as organisational infrastructure.
Uma Mishra-Newbery — Founder and Lead Strategist
Dana Zhang - Research, Learning and Methodology Partner
Advisory Ecology - Our advisors contribute experience, critical reflection and strategic guidance across movement organising, feminist philanthropy, governance, organisational development and other areas of infrastructure practice.
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