The Full Story

About

Six years ago, a consortium of funders began seeding a bold idea:

What if queer movements owned the ground beneath their feet?

Through that collaboration, LGBTQIA+ organisations in Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe purchased their first plots and buildings. The ripple effects were visible: greater safety, deeper community roots, and new possibilities for bold, long-term work. Those ripple effects convinced us that infrastructure can be a launchpad for the financial liberation of CSOs.

Out of this success grew a clear, collective mandate from activists across Eastern and Southern Africa: create a regionally governed hub that keeps land, expertise, and decision-making close to home.

Today, we stand at the threshold of that vision; building a new hub dedicated to property access for queer civil society organisations in East Africa. Grounded in local knowledge and powered by a network of allies, we are designing finance tools that meet communities where they are and keep assets in collective hands for generations.

When LGBTQIA+ civil society organisations are supported to own property, the ripple effects go beyond infrastructure; fostering safety, creative autonomy, community memory, and long-term sustainability grounded in land and place.

What we do

We mobilise trust-based, flexible resources that place land, buildings, and other forms of community-owned infrastructure firmly in the hands of LGBTQIA+ movements.

How we do it

Flexible capital, local control
Grants, low-interest loans, and lease-to-own options are structured to match each context’s legal realities and cash-flow rhythms.

A digital ecosystem for property-focused resource sharing
Our platform maps verified safe properties, lists trusted professionals, enables peer-to-peer lending, and crowdsources capital. This turns isolated efforts into an interconnected safety net.

Rotating local expertise
By convening a regional pool of project managers, architects, and lawyers, we take the technical burden (acquisition, permitting, construction) off movement leaders. That frees them to focus on vision-setting, community building, and strategy. Shared specialists also knit organisations together across borders, reducing duplicated effort, accelerating collective learning, and channelling more funding into true movement innovation rather than overhead.

Learning circles
Because this is the first fund dedicated to queer movement infrastructure in the Global South, we intentionally carve out learning circles where leaders co-design, critique, and refine projects in real time. These gatherings turn top-down “capacity-building” on its head: knowledge flows bottom-up and sideways, so the solutions that emerge are rooted in lived experience and collective imagination—not outside prescriptions.

Stewardship, not speculation
Every grant agreement bakes in community governance, ecological design, and long-term maintenance plans. By insisting that land and buildings remain in collective hands (and are cared for in ways that honour local ecologies) we align infrastructure projects with the principle that people’s well-being is inseparable from the planet’s. Property becomes a living commons, protected for future generations rather than a commodity to flip for short-term gain.

Why we do it

Because owning land shifts that power.
Safe, permanent space protects against raids, landlord evictions, and political swings, giving communities room to heal, organise, and thrive. Movements need roots, not just grants.

Because care is infrastructure.
Our work has shown us that property and buildings are containers for mutual aid, culture, and collective memory. When movements hold the deed, those containers endure.

Because environmental justice is queer justice.
Land held and designed through Indigenous ecological knowledge nurtures both people and planet.

Because colonial cartographies still decide who belongs.
Borders, zoning laws, and market forces render queer and Indigenous lives hyper-visible yet disposable.

Mission

To resource and strengthen LGBTQIA+ movements in the Global South by funding community-owned infrastructure grounded in Indigenous, feminist, and relational worldviews. We envision a future where land is not a commodity, but a living relationship that is nurtured and protected.

We do this by mobilising flexible funding, building trust-based partnerships, and supporting long-term stewardship of land and space.

Vision

We envision a future where LGBTQIA+ CSOs are able to sustainably care for each other and land collectively without dependence on global north funding cycles.

A world where LGBTQIA+ communities can restore safety, sovereignty, and sustainability through land and infrastructure held in collective care.

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Ripple Effects We Seek

Safety

Spaces shielded from raids, displacement, and violence

Creative Autonomy

Room for art, organising, and joyful existence.

Environmental Harmony

Structures that honour local ecologies and climate realities

Narrative Shift

From “nobody’s land” to every-body’s land