Dreaming and Worldbuilding
Insights, Strategies and Calls to Action grounded in the dreams and power of Girls and Young Feminists
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Overview
To dream of radically different worlds is to refuse to normalize dystopia. It is a necessary part of building new realities here, now, and for our collective futures.
For much of history, and today, the world as we know it has tried to shrink girls’ dreams. It pushes girls to dream smaller, and sometimes, to not dream at all. Yet the very dreams that girls and young feminists are daring to imagine, against all odds, lay out clear blueprints for change. They are shaping new realities for themselves, for their communities and for us all.
WE ASK: WHAT WOULD BE POSSIBLE IF THE WORLD SUPPORTED THE DREAMS OF GIRLS AND YOUNG FEMINISTS?
This publication traces the bold visions, recurring themes, and practical blueprints for change that emerged from the dreams of girls and young feminists who played the Dreaming and Worldbuilding Game in collective sessions across multiple countries.
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It positions dreaming as a political act and a radical strategy of resistance, expanding what becomes imaginable and possible. It offers clear calls to action for funders to resource dreaming and worldbuilding as essential pathways to systemic change.
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Why Now: Dreaming as a Political Act
Collective dreaming is a political intervention and a radical strategy of resistance.
We understand imagination as both a method and a medium for social transformation. It expands the horizon of what is possible, and helps articulate what a more just world can be. To dream is to break beyond unjust structures. Systemic oppression actively limits possibility, constrains imagination, and concentrates resources and power in the hands of a few. ​Girls’ and young feminists’ dreams are both visionary and deeply tangible. They teach us that dreaming is not only a hope for a better future, but an assertion of their right to shape the world itself.
“Dreaming is not a luxury, it is a political and collective necessity.”
— Juliana Román Lozano
Across regions, girls and young feminists are dreaming and building…
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1. Freedom, Safety & Belonging: A world that feels like a hug
The presence of safety, the deepest sense of belonging, and the right to take up space without apology. Freedom, safety and belonging are the conditions that make all other dreaming possible.
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2. Mutuality, Care & Shared Wellbeing: We see each other and help each other
Worlds sustained through mutual responsibility, shared abundance, and collective wellbeing. Care is not a private burden, an act of charity or reserved for few who can afford it: it is the operating system of society.
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3. Freedom to Express, Question, and Be Curious: A world that is patient enough to reach the truth
Freedom to think, wonder, rebel, and speak the truth. Expression is unpoliced, questions are welcomed, and curiosity is a form of power rather than a threat. Worlds where people pause, think, and look beneath the surface.
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4. Connection to Land, Nature & Ecological Harmony: A world of regeneration
Worlds that honor the land, the sky, the water, and the creatures with whom we share life. Nature as a relationship to be tended to, not a resource to be extracted. Environments that breathe, regenerate, and hold us.
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5. Reclaiming Joy, Rest, and Play:Time is not a race – it is a rhythm
Worlds where time moves gently, and where rest, joy, and play shape the cadence of life. Pleasure and rest are not seen as distractions from a meaningful life, but are the substance of a meaningful life.
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6. Art and Sensory Worlds: The beauty of life
Art, beauty and sensory experience as core components of healthy societies, challenging paradigms that treat the arts as non-essential, secondary, or reserved for those with wealth. Creativity supports communities in teaching, healing, governing, and remembering.
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7. Leadership, Agency & Shared Power: Leading as responsibility
Worlds where power is reconfigured, not as dominance or hierarchy, but as shared responsibility, ethical guidance, and collective decision-making. Leadership is deeply relational, distributed and collective.
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8. Justice, Systems & Structural Fairness: A world with abundance for all
Worlds built on fairness, equal access, and dignity in daily life. Everyone has enough, power is shared, and no one thrives at another’s expense. Worlds where everyone can live with dignity, without fear, and without scarcity.
Reflections from facilitators
Dreaming and Worldbuilding game facilitators accompany girls and young feminists in spaces of imagination, resistance, and collective creation. Their insights and reflections offer important learnings from practices of holding and guiding spaces for girls to dream and articulate the worlds they are building.
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The facilitators reflect on how accompanying girls in dreaming and worldbuilding disrupts their own assumptions, loosens adult-centered hierarchies, and revives their own capacity to imagine collectively.
They highlight the transformative possibilities that emerge when girls’ and young feminists’ dreams are held, shared, and built collectively.
Calls to Action for Funders
Girls and young feminists are imagining and shaping futures far beyond the limits of traditional philanthropy and what is currently deemed as a legitimate pathway for change. Their dreams reveal not a longing to escape the world, but a demand to remake it.
When resourced with deep trust and unrestricted support, girls and young feminists do not only dream of new worlds –they actively and tangibly transform systems, communities, and narratives. In order to do so, funders must:
Trust, fund and support girls’ and young feminists’ leadership through sustained, flexible resourcing​
Embrace liberatory practices and emergent learning by rethinking conventional approaches to Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL)
Resource girls’ and young feminists’ long-term economic self-determination
Practice the power of collective dreaming as resource stewards
Recognize girls and young feminists as cross-movement leaders, breaking down sectoral silos to uplift intersectional leadership
Fund spaces for dreaming, care, joy, experimentation and radical imagination
Leverage funders’ power and resources towards the possibilities of dreaming and worldbuilding
Acknowledgements
With deep gratitude to all of the girls and young feminists who participated in the sessions of the Dreaming and Worldbuilding Game across Argentina, India, Jordan, Kenya, Romania, Tanzania, the United States, and multi-regional sessions, whose radical imagination, dreams, insights, resistance and worldbuilding form the foundation of this collective body of work.
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We are also deeply grateful to the feminist facilitators and allies who accompanied these spaces of collaborative, intergenerational creation and learning, including those who have contributed their reflections to this report: Asha Athman, Augustina Mihaela Vasile, Banan AbuZainEddin, Gabrielle Bailey, Jimena Alehandra Aon, Juliana Roman Lozano, Nyawira Wahito, Priyanka Samy, Purity Kagwiria, and Zeedah Meierhofer-Mangeli.
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Publication text by: Majandra Rodriguez Acha, Jody Myrum, and Laura V.
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Illustrations by: Ayleen Mayte Diaz Rivera