Agendas and Priorities of Organized Youth in Central America: Towards Political and Emotional Sustainability

• 1. The Challenge: Organizing in Hostile Environments
• 2. Key Findings: Fluidity as a Survival Strategy
• 3. New Priorities: Political Care
• 4. Strategic Opportunity: How to Finance Real Change
• 5. Conclusion:
• 6. Listening is the first step to supporting.

In a regional context marked by social inequalities, democratic erosion, the shrinking of civic space, and the rise of authoritarianism, forms of organization are changing significantly.

Recent research by the FCAM Foundation, which gathered the voices of 100 youth organizations of women, trans people, and non-binary individuals, reveals that Central American youth are not abandoning their struggles, but rather transforming them in order to survive.

Understanding these new dynamics is vital for philanthropy to effectively channel resources toward the defense of human rights and the sustainability of social movements in Central America.

1. The Challenge: Organizing in Hostile Environments

Youth organizations operate in environments marked by repression, institutional corruption, and gender-based violence. Compounding this are economic insecurity and a lack of opportunities, which often force their leaders into migration or exile.

However, faced with political exclusion and distrust of traditional institutions, young people have chosen to create autonomous spaces where they redefine their methods of organizing and empowerment.

2. Key Findings: Fluidity as a Survival Strategy

Unlike previous generations, new youth movements no longer depend on rigid structures, physical offices, or fixed territories. They adapt to their circumstances.

• Mobile and Digital Organization: They take shape as transient and flexible spaces. Activism occurs simultaneously in the physical world and on social media, which function as “political territories” connecting rural, urban, and exiled youth.
• Decentralization: Faced with surveillance, they opt for small, autonomous networks that operate discreetly to protect themselves.
• The “politics of the everyday”: Activism moves to the micro level: reading workshops, urban gardens, and art become tools as political as a march, challenging the separation between public and private.

3. New Priorities: Political Care

While historical struggles (feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, environmental justice) persist, young people are reinterpreting them through an intersectional lens.

• Mental health and self-care: In contexts of trauma and persecution, emotional well-being is a sine qua non for sustaining these struggles. Caring for oneself and supporting one another (mutual aid) is a political act of resistance.
• Bodily and economic autonomy: They demand dignified conditions for activism, challenging the culture of sacrifice and seeking to break with the precariousness that undermines their physical well-being.

4. Strategic Opportunity: How to Finance Real Change

For these movements to be sustained and to grow, the support model must evolve. The findings highlight four urgent calls for donors and cooperation agencies:

• Flexibility and trust: Multi-year, flexible funding is needed to cover operational and well-being costs, not just specific projects.
• Sustaining life: It is imperative to fund decent wages and stipends. Without basic economic autonomy for activists, it is difficult to sustain movements.
• Comprehensive security: Support strengthening digital and physical security, as well as protection protocols in criminalizing environments.
• Inclusive access: In calls for proposals, include diverse and cross-cutting themes, and ensure accessible, equitable language to reach emerging, rural, and linguistically and culturally diverse organizations.

5. Conclusion:

Central American youth are responding to adversity with creativity and resilience, shifting from direct confrontation toward building community and emotional connections. Supporting them requires philanthropy that is equally flexible, courageous, and committed to sustaining life.

6. Listening is the first step to supporting.

One hundred organizations of young women, trans people, and non-binary people from Central America have spoken out. Their strategies of resilience, care, and creativity are their response to the hostile contexts they face. Don’t let their voices get lost in the noise.

• Download the full report to update your perspective.
• Read the findings on “Support to Strengthen and Sustain Collective Power.”
• Save this resource as your funding guide.
• Share so that philanthropy can hear what Central American youth have to say.

Download the research findings: Spanish version | English version