May, Wednesday 21, 2025

In the current global context of polycrises, development aid funding cuts, and political climate of deliberately induced chaos and confusion, large population sectors, social justice movements, and, more gravely, marginalized communities at the interstices and crevices where systems of power start dismantling are recurrently put on survival mode of constantly seeking and competing for resources.

How do we step out of survival mode if our survival responses are rooted in competition? How do we aim to build more transformational –rather than transactional– partnerships that can better resist the context’s’ pull towards division and multidirectional animosity? These questions guided this session’s conversation on how mutualism and mechanisms of mutual aid can be a way out of that loop.

Intentional trust-building can facilitate correlative accountability and nourish a creative disruption of contrived scarcity. FRIDA|The Young Feminist Fund and Ecuadorian journalist collective La Periodica showcased this through their ways of working that resisted narratives of competition and movement fragmentation despite constricting contexts.

More on La Periodica’s Escuela de Comunicación Feminista, known as La Ortiga:

In 2017, La Periódica was launched as Ecuador’s first media outlet rooted in a feminist narrative lens. Building on this foundation, the Escuela de Comunicación Feminista, known as La Ortiga, was created in 2020 to deepen the impact of feminist journalism across the country.
Why the name La Ortiga? The plant is known not only for its medicinal properties—stimulating blood circulation and healing—but also for its sting when touched. This dual nature reflects the mission of feminist journalism: to provoke and challenge when necessary, while also offering paths toward social healing and transformation. In other words, when feminist journalism “stings,” it also activates.

This year, FRIDA – a youth-led feminist fund that supports young feminist activists around the world by mobilizing resources, funding, and strengthening leadership – is launching its First-Ever Reverse Call for Applications, an important milestone within FRIDA’s Transition Strategy to support grantee partners after their formal funding cycle ends.

How does this work? Transitioning grantee partners, along with alumni (former grantees), were invited to nominate new feminist collectives from their own regions—especially those that are newly formed and typically excluded from traditional funding spaces. After nominations, the applicants themselves vote to decide where the grants go.

This represents a deepened model of participatory grantmaking that now stretches across the full lifecycle of the funding relationship—not just at the beginning, but also at the end.

Specifically, in September (register here if interested in knowing more), they’re piloting an online space that highlights the journeys of grantee partners transitioning out of funding. Instead of making these groups start from scratch to find new funding, FRIDA is inviting donors to apply to support them.