In 2025 we celebrated 15 years of FRIDA – A young feminist fund that boldly imagined and then created a participatory grantmaking mechanism that has funded young feminist collectives where they are. A young feminist fund that has put the decision making power about resourcing back into the hands of the communities themselves. A young feminist fund that has foregrounded transparency and equal distributions of power even in a historically hierarchical sector. A young feminist fund that has, above all, remained steadfast in its political commitments to young feminist collectives across the Global Majority.
Following an intermission in our Call for Applications where we stepped back to re-imagine, re-evaluate and collectively reflect on our ways of working, in 2025 we welcomed 24 new grantee partners through a community-led Call for Applications.
In 2025 we welcomed two new Co-Executive Directors, who for the first time in FRIDA history, came from within FRIDA’s management team – initiating their leadership journey already firmly rooted in FRIDA’s past and present, with a clear understanding of FRIDA’s mission and where we might venture to in the future.
In 2025 we held our very first Reverse Call for Applications – the next step in FRIDA’s feminist and participatory grantmaking journey. This time bringing into the power-dispersal-and-power-dismantling arena the often uncontested process of resource mobilization. FRIDA asked – what if the labour of sourcing and securing funding was not solely on young feminists, but instead shifted to funders, who could ‘apply’ to fund the young collectives transitioning out of FRIDA?
In the midst of increasing alarm the world over about the state of our political institutions, the state of our planet and the life she holds, the state of human rights mechanisms and the ability of life, freedom, liberation, love and joy to persist, we do not take for granted all that FRIDA had to celebrate in 2025. We also do not take for granted what it means and what it takes not just for all of us at FRIDA, but for feminist movements across the world, to organize in increasingly hostile territories and in opposition to forces that have taken direct and deliberate moves to restrict and disempower feminist organizing.
It is not an easy nor a particularly joyful time to be a feminist activist – and yet it is precisely the ability of feminists across generations, geographies and identities to reach for one another in community, allyship and solidarity to revolt against systems of oppression while simultaneously anchoring in our joy and power of spirit.It is the ability of feminists in general and young feminists in particular to dismantle the old way while dreaming and creating the new way, that has been our compass.
A luta Continua
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In 2025 we strengthened our support for grantee partners through the implementation of FRIDA’s Grantee Partner Journey. FRIDA spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on how a structured system of financial and non-financial support for grantee partners could function – enabling young feminist collectives to receive capacity strengthening support from the very initial stages of joining the FRIDAverse, until their transition out…
Following on from the Re-Imagining INGOs (RINGO) project – which issued a ‘call for proposals’ to international actors (INGOs and funders) to provide support for locally-determined endeavours – we gathered young feminists and funders to flip the concept of resource mobilisation on its head. We began to imagine what it might look like if funders were the ones to apply to feminist collectives to be able to fund them…
This past year reminded us that moments of tension and backlash are often where the most important work happens. We witnessed organizations navigating safety concerns, political uncertainty, funding challenges, and also, a growing pressure to respond to urgent and interconnected crises.
From growing conservatism and rapidly shrinking civil society space to the destruction of our shared ecosystem, the world as we’ve known it is facing challenges that can often feel insurmountable. Yet in the midst of these difficult realities, young feminist organising provides a resilient and hopeful bright spot. Young feminist activists are part of a long history of youth activism and resistance, and we were excited to be able to extend support to 24 new grantee partners in their individual and collective journeys to liberation…
