Call For Group Profiles

Thousand Currents supports movement and movement-support groups that are working on food sovereignty, climate justice, and economic justice. 

Moving from an intergenerational and feminist lens, Thousand Currents funds Indigenous, Black, Afro-descendant, and caste oppressed peoples, with a focus on youth, LGBTQIA peoples, women, girls, and gender expansive people that are: 

• Based in the Global South and led by people from the Global South, and
• Implementing self-determined solutions that benefit people in the Global South communities that their group is accountable to.

Thousand Currents does not fund:

• groups led by Global North leadership, groups based in the Global North, or groups with Global North leadership executing programs in the Global South  
• international aid agencies, including local affiliates that are responsible for their own fundraising
• businesses
• groups led by government agencies or entities
• religious institutions  

Thousand Currents currently has over 100 partnerships with groups across Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Thousand Currents movement partners work at the intersection of climate, food and economy.

Climate Justice

Climate change is one of the greatest existential challenges of our time. This is a human crisis that requires us to transform our collective institutions, practices, and behaviors. In order to do so, we must lean into interdependence, well-being, and care for all living species.

Thousand Currents funds movements working to respect, defend, and protect Mother Earth. We support their initiatives to keep a check on rising global temperatures, and live sustainably within planetary boundaries. We partner with climate justice advocates who are building systems that address and transform historical and contemporary systems that perpetuate oppressive, exploitative, and extractive practices. We recognize their contributions in nourishing what we have and looking at the root of the present climate crisis from a social justice perspective.

Examples of work that our movement partners do:

• fight to stop fossil fuel extraction and for community-owned and controlled renewable energy infrastructure 
• de-commodify natural resources and spaces
• enact and struggle for the sustainable use, collective management, and equitable access of our natural resources
• reduce communities’ vulnerability to natural disasters
• combat toxic waste and pollution

Economic Justice

Our current global economic system is based on exploitation and profit maximization that sacrifice and harm our most vulnerable communities and the planet. To build towards a vision where all communities are thriving and living with dignity, we need a shift to new economic systems based on justice, care, interdependence, abundance, and regeneration.

Thousand Currents funds community-determined economic systems and practices where the means of production, power and decision-making sits with the workers, where resources are stewarded and distributed equitably so that people can live a dignified life, and where the driving logic of any economic encounter is the wellbeing of the planet and people.

Examples of work that our movement partners do:

• ensure healthy, safe, and dignified working conditions
• operate and engage the broader community through principles of mutual aid and solidarity
• create ecologically regenerative worker owned cooperatives
• generate livelihoods based on sustainable production and consumption 
• resist extractive industries and corporate power

Food Sovereignty 

At a meeting held in Mali in West Africa in 2007, fisherfolk, Indigenous peoples, landless peoples, rural workers, urban movements, migrants, pastoralists, and forest communities from 80 countries issued the Nyéléni Declaration on Food Sovereignty, which defined food sovereignty as “the right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agricultural systems.”

Taking the lead from the Nyéléni Declaration, Thousand Currents funds food systems transformation driven by Indigenous stewards of land and territory and the people who are the primary producers of food for most of the world.

Examples of work that our movement partners do:

• fortify local food systems that optimize biodiversity
• advance sustainable food production methods, healthy ecosystems, and public health through agroecology
• build farmer managed seed systems to protect local resources and knowledge systems
• create market linkages that are owned and operated by smallholder farmers
• resist land dispossession and are building collective land stewardship practices and models
• educate, advocate, and resist governments in order to put smallholder farmers’ interests before those of multinational corporations

Click here to read more about our model. 

Thousand Currents’ grantmaking approach is by invitation, which means that we do not accept unsolicited proposals for funding. However, we are currently experimenting with an open call for group profiles to learn about movement and movement-support groups that are using one or more of the following tactics: strategic litigation, popular education, cultural production (including narrative change), and/or campaigns to strengthen the movement work of food sovereignty, climate justice, and/or economic justice in the Global South. 

We know that there are many groups that we are not yet familiar with, and we hope that through this open call for profiles we can deepen our understanding of the movement ecosystems in the Global South and learn about groups that we are not yet familiar with. Additionally, there is a possibility that some groups may be considered for a one-time Tactical Initiatives grant. 

If we think a group may be a good fit for a Tactical Initiatives grant, a member from one of our regional teams will reach out to that group to request more information as part of our decision making process. Please note that due to the anticipated volume of profiles we will receive, we will not be able to respond to, or provide funding for, all groups who submit a profile or who we may be in contact with.

The call for group profiles is now open and profiles can be submitted until Monday, 1 April, 2024. If you are a movement or movement-support group using one or more of the tactics of strategic litigation and/or popular education and/or cultural production, and/or campaigns to strengthen food sovereignty, climate justice, and economic justice work, we encourage you to submit a group profile. 

*Please note that the call for profiles is only open to groups that have not previously received a grant from Thousand Currents.*

You can submit a profile by completing the group profile form, available in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, and English. 

Though there is a possibility that some groups that submit a profile may be considered for a one-time Tactical Initiatives grant, Thousand Currents will not be able to provide funding for, or respond to, all groups who submit a profile or who we may be in contact with, due to the anticipated volume of profiles we receive. 

If our Global Programs Team thinks a group may be a good fit for a one-time Tactical Initiatives grant, they will reach out to that group to request more information as part of our decision making process.

We recognize that lasting change takes time. It requires an approach that is nonlinear, flexible, and multi pronged. In order to fund our movement partners through many cycles of change, we provide various forms of support. Thematic funding supports the longer-term work of groups working on climate justice, food sovereignty, and economic justice with 10 years of core funding. Tactical funding supports work on strategic litigation, popular education, cultural production, and campaigns that are strengthening climate justice, food sovereignty and economic justice movement work through one-time grants of $25,000 - $250,000 USD, with a grant period of 1-3 years. All of our movement partners also have access to supplemental funding for emergencies, security responses, learning initiatives, and travel.

Thousand Currents Tactical Initiatives grants support work on strategic litigation, popular education, cultural production, and campaigns that are strengthening climate justice, food sovereignty and economic justice movement work through one-time grants of $25,000 - $250,000 USD with a grant period of 1-3 years.

Thousand Currents defines these tactics as follows:

Strategic litigation: Legal cases which carry the potential to impact beyond the decision of the single case for the purpose of setting legal precedents that create a more enabling environment for climate justice, food sovereignty, and economic justice movement work.

Popular education: Methods of education where learning is collective and where each person is both a student and a teacher for the purpose of supporting communities to generate, exchange, and build knowledge on climate justice, food sovereignty, and economic justice and issues which inform and impact climate justice, food sovereignty, and economic justice.

Cultural production: The use of cultural production, including, but not limited to, music, writing, journalism, theater, radio, and visual art, for the purposes of political education and narrative setting work on climate justice, food sovereignty, and economic justice.

Campaigns: A series of actions that seek to achieve a finite goal related to the Thousand Currents focus areas of food sovereignty, climate justice, and economic justice or whose yields reinforce the work of food sovereignty, climate justice, and economic justice movements but whose mission may not be directly tied to these focus areas.