The kaupapa we’ve funded:

Since our inception, we’ve provided almost $350,000 in small and medium-sized grants to the following kaupapa: ActionStation, 350 Aotearoa, National Disabled Student’s Association, Aotearoa Liberation League, Rangatahi Regeneration, Free Fares, Whaingaroa Rangatahi Climate Crisis rōpū, Wānanga Takatāpui Kirikiriroa, Equitable Insurance Project, Utu Ā Matimati, Ngā Rangahautira, Kete Education, Mana Āniwaniwa, People Against Prisons Aotearoa, Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga, Aotearoa Legal Workers' Union, Te Ara Whatu, Raise The Bar Hospitality Union, Te Waka Angamua, Generation Zero, Ngāi Tauira, Ara Taiohi, Youth Arts New Zealand, Ban Conversion Therapy Action Group and InsideOUT Kōaro.

All of our finances are transparently published in real-time on the Open Collective platform.

Multi-Year Grants

The Youth Movement Fund Committee received 58 unique applications for the five multi-year grants at a total of $6.9m requested. The grants total $120,000 per movement distributed at $30,000 per year over four years. These five kaupapa were successful:

  • Tertiary education in Aotearoa is inaccessible, inequitable, and exclusionary. ⅓ of disabled people have ambitions to study but are limited by the inclusivity of tertiary education. Disabled students are roughly 1.3 times as likely to have no post-school qualification and half as likely to have a bachelor’s degree or higher. It is these statistics and on-the-ground realities that drive NDSA’s pūmanawa (what makes our heart beat); a future where education is universally accessible and equitable for all people.

    Founded in 2021, NDSA advocates for a barrier-free, accessible, and equitable tertiary education. While they are still building their membership, they aim to diligently represent the disabled student population to the best of their ability. They do this through discussions and wānanga with disabled learners, disabled persons’ organisations, and other national student associations.

  • Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga understand that many of the contemporary social and environmental problems of our time are rooted in colonisation. Racial justice, climate justice, feminist, trans and queer liberation cannot be fully realised without the end of colonialism and the restoration and rematriation of Indigenous land and sovereignty everywhere. They start from here, in Aotearoa, and see it as their responsibility to bring tauiwi Asian communities in alignment with the visions for Matike Mai. They see that meaningful and long-lasting social and political change needs to come from communities, from the grassroots, bottom up, and to do so, this requires collective organising.

    This grant will support the organising, relationship-building and capacity-building of youth within ASTR who will then do outreach, engagement, and education with wider Asian communities in order to mobilise support for constitutional transformation.

  • While climate change is a product of colonisation, it is often a lower priority for iwi/hāpū/marae and whānau behind housing, food and energy shortages; stolen tamariki, and broken justice systems. Te Waka Angamua aims to build collective capability and capacity for climate justice amongst hapori Māori, by facilitating a process to restore whakapapa, revive and heal connections between rangatahi Māori and their turangawaewae, marae and ahi kaa.

    As a first-step to this, Te Waka Angamua will hold a series of wānanga around Aotearoa focusing on the intersections between climate change and te ao Māori, with the primary aim of listening to concerns from hapū, iwi and Māori communities and consolidating these into an established base of priorities for Māori in relation to climate change.

    This will not be a short-term kaupapa; this will take years and years of dedication to ensure the priorities or Māori communities are understood and adequately represented in nation-wide climate action. This will be reflected through relationships, and these relationships take time to establish and nourish.

  • People Against Prisons Aotearoa (PAPA) is a prison abolitionist organisation working for a fairer, safer, and more just Aotearoa. Incarceration is never just violence against individuals, but also against whānau and communities. PAPA believes that everyone has the ability to change. No one is born a criminal. When someone has hurt others, that does not mean they are destined to keep hurting others for the rest of their lives. If people are treated with dignity and respect and given the resources they need to survive and thrive, we can live in a less violent and more peaceful society.

    PAPA envision and are committed to creating an Aotearoa without prisons where there are community-oriented systems of justice that addresses social harm through transformation, restoration, rehabilitation, and prevention by helping people to change their behaviour and repair damaged relationships.

    They want to see an Aotearoa that: Empowers young people and rangatahi; Lifts the material outcomes of whānau; and Eliminates incarceration and its many psychological and material harms from society.

  • Mana Āniwaniwa’s goal is to fight for takatāpui and queer liberation through the delivery of community wānanga and kaupapa. Their goal is to prevent and end suicide in takatāpui and queer communities and to work with takatāpui and queer communities in a way that is impactful, fulfilling, and mana-enhancing.

    Acting as a vessel for societal change, Mana Āniwaniwa embody a preventative-based practice targeting rangatahi Māori and whānau Māori to grow their competence in takatāpuitanga and rainbow knowledge through wānanga and training.

One Off & Rapid Response Grants

The Youth Movement Fund Committee has distributed $182,000 in one-off and rapid response grants, as follows:

  • A pilot programme of a six week Takatāpui Youth Group in Ōtautahi where takatāpui rangatahi are introduced to mātauranga Māori and toi through workshops with tohunga/experts in raranga, rongoa, taonga puoro, pounamu carving, tā moko and waiata. This will be a pilot for a dream of creating a non-profit entity focused on takatāpui wellbeing and health care in Te Waipounamu.

  • Aotearoa Liberation League has gained over 100,000 followers on Tiktok and Instagram within eight months. They use their growing platforms to inspire people to imagine new ways of seeing and being in the world, beyond the colonial worldview. Led by the values of nonviolence, parihakatanga, kotahitanga, aroha and whakawhanaungatanga, they create powerful engaging and educational videos optimised for social media breaking down important topics, sharing radical perspectives and increasing accessibility to political knowledge.

  • Wānanga and programs for rangatahi Māori and Pasifika to step into their gangatanga by standing in their mana, so they can infiltrate in spaces that deliberately isolate and tokenize the voices of rangatahi Māori and Pasifika.

  • A youth-led campaign for central government to fund free public transport for the following groups: people with Community Service Cards, people with Total Mobility Cards and their support people, students, and under-25s.

  • A youth-led movement acting in response to the climate crisis by motivating adults and youth in the community to accelerate their response. Pūtea will support them to purchase beach clean up gear, koha for spaces for hui, koha for transport, koha for boat and petrol to clean up Te Akau, space hire for protest art, t-shirt and sticker costs, kai for all day workshops, support with digital devices to start social media campaigns and deliver talks to local busineses.

  • Wānanga for Takatāpui in Kirikiriroa to come together as a community to share knowledge and stories, as well as to dream collectively. This space enables intergenerational relationships to form through mahi tahi and tuakana teina opportunities.

  • A campaign led by young people with lived experience to ensure international students in Aotearoa are guaranteed free and equal access to sexual health, closing the discriminatory effects posed to gender and sexual minorities.

  • A takatāpui-led initiative to establish and maintain a space that is safe for tangata takatāpui to gather, share whakaaro, collaborate, and conspire in order to produce art that acts as political propaganda, inspiration for political agitation, and a launching pad and centre-point of a new, radical political movement.

  • Ngā Rangahautira supports Māori Law Students at Victoria University of Wellington in their journey through law school. Their vision is the decolonisation of the law school and legal profession. This grant was made possible with a donation to YMFA from The Jones Family and will support Te Rōpū o Ngā Kaiaronui (Ngā Rangahautira submissions group) to advocate for Māori through educated opinions and parliamentary submissions on contemporary issues that impact Māori. As well as this, the grant will support their Mana Māori series which provides tauira with an opportunity to hear from Māori legal professionals on chosen topics. This helps educate tauira about the realities of Māori in legal practice, and offers the opportunity to learn from leaders in the industry.

  • Te Hohaieti o Te Reo Māori was originally known as the Te Reo Māori Society, the Wellington branch of students who spent two years rallying support, along with Ngā Tamatoa, for the Māori language petition that was presented to Parliament on the morning of 14 September 1972.

    Today a group of university students at Te Rerenga Waka are reinvigorating the kaupapa with a focus on empowering rangatahi Māori to reconnect to ancient and ancestral knowledge around the environment through a series of wānanga.

  • In the international climate negotiations space, there is a severe lack of representation from the Pacific, notably, rangatahi Māori. We supported Tiana Jakicevich and Kaeden Watts to attend the United Nations COP27 as the only rangatahi Māori accredited to go.

  • Our committee members are all involved in movements themselves and as part of our acknowledgment of their contribution to this kaupapa, we distributed $8,000 one-off grants to their organisation, collective or kaupapa. These grants went to: Aotearoa Legal Workers' Union, Te Ara Whatu, Generation Zero, 350 Aotearoa, Ngāi Tauira, InsideOUT Kōaro, People Against Prisons Aotearoa, ActionStation, National Disabled Students' Association, Youth Arts New Zealand, Ara Taiohi, Raise The Bar Hospitality Union and Ban Conversion Therapy Action Group.