Why joy is the resistance philanthropy needs right now

Anti-rights groups’ exploitation of events in Ceuta revealed a pattern we have seen many times before. Rather than an isolated incident, it is the latest link in a coordinated movement that feeds off fear and misdirected anger.

With every incident, the communities targeted by this rhetoric hold their breath, wondering how bad the backlash will be. Anxious about whether this is the moment that tips the next election in favour of a far-right government, many quietly retreat, making themselves less visible. 

For those of us supporting the founders and organisations building within these communities, the question is how to keep creating the conditions for that work to continue when the forces pushing in the opposite direction are so well-funded and well-organised.

The political shift they fear is already gathering pace: far-right parties now account for close to a quarter of Europe’s overall vote share. In Germany, the AfD has more than tripled its support among young voters since 2013. Using their authority, they filed nearly 300 parliamentary queries targeting left-leaning NGOs last year, more than double the year before.

This is a growing threat at precisely the moment civil society is being squeezed and needed more than ever. In July, European networks, Philea included, called on the EU to protect and increase funding for AgoraEU – the main programme for culture, media and civil society – and its CERV+ strand. Demand already outstrips supply, and strong projects are going unfunded –  a reality we are all painfully aware of in this space.

Under this kind of pressure, global majority communities – especially women – are pushed to avoid drawing attention. That instinct is understandable, but it comes at a real cost. In the UK, ethnic minority businesses contribute over £25 billion to GDP, which could grow fourfold with the right support. Research from the European Council also estimates that closing gender gaps alone could add up to €3.15 trillion to the EU’s GDP by 2050. Every time a founder or organisation shrinks rather than grows, that potential goes unrealised.

One of the most effective ways we have found to counter this pressure, after a decade of supporting women from the global majority, is to build radical joy and optimism directly into how we work. It is a lever philanthropy rarely reaches for, as funders tend to respond to crisis and are slower to invest in joy, which may look indulgent next to the problems it sits beside. 

But there is a reason we believe it can work. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory suggests that positive emotions can widen what a person believes is possible, creating the conditions to build lasting resources such as confidence, skills, and resilience. We’ve tried to build this into our work at every level, from our fund, workshops, events and even social media. 

Our clearest example is our retreats. What became our surf retreats grew out of Borders Without Borders – an initiative we started in 2017 – bringing adventure sports, such as longboarding and surfing, to women from the global majority in England. We deliberately chose something that felt out of reach for our grantees; not another six-week leadership programme, but a new experience. The goal was to create conditions where joy could emerge, and where the participants could experience taking up space without needing to justify it.

We braced for resistance when we launched the first retreat in 2019; what we got instead was demand, and it hasn’t slowed since. In fact, many who joined our initial programmes are still engaged members of the community today, ten years on. 

For one returning alumna, that first retreat opened a door she did not know was there. To Nafisa Bakkar, co-founder of Amaliah – a media platform for Muslim women – surfing never felt like it was on ‘the menu’. Yet, that first retreat gave her the confidence to keep pushing herself, eventually training for and completing a triathlon last year – something she credits directly to the retreat. Other participants speak to a similar sense of possibility: trying something outside their comfort zone gave them the confidence to progress in their work and undertake a more senior role.

That, to us, is the case for joy as strategy, a mechanism that keeps working long after the moment itself has ended. It shifts what feels possible, and from that shift people build and keep building without burning out under the pressures of the world around them. We also try to intentionally create spaces where joy and pain can coexist, having found that centring joy creates room to unpack the trauma many women in our cohorts carry. 

For the philanthropic sector, this does not necessarily require retreats or large budgets. It does, however, require a deliberate choice to centre joy in how funding works, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

That, for us, has meant absorbing the cost and labour of organising ourselves, rather than leaving grantees to fit it around everything else they are already carrying. It could mean funding community time and relationship-building alongside project work, creating space to celebrate small wins rather than focusing only on crisis response. It could also mean designing the funding process with their wellbeing in mind, keeping applications simple so they don’t add to the burnout many are feeling. It’s a small change, but one that protects people’s time rather than extracting from it.

When fear is pushing the communities we want to support to think twice about taking up space, creating the conditions to keep building is part of how we fight back. In a world where anti-rights movements feed on that fear, we cannot afford to overlook the power of joy, no matter how modest a tool it seems against a well-funded opposition.

Kiran Kaur and Amna Akhtar are the co-founders of GirlDreamer, a Birmingham-born non-profit that has spent a decade funding and building with young women from the global majority across the UK. Kiran is an Obama Foundation European Leader, and Amna is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree; together they run the Dream Fund, a micro-grants programme supporting early-stage founders.