joy∞untu connects communities driving systemic change with those ready to fund them. Our approach is guided by a Theory of Change that links community-led action to structural transformation. By shifting decision-making, investing in collaboration, and amplifying community wisdom, we help unlock the conditions for long-term systems change. The five building blocks below create the foundation for that change, together forming a power-shifting model that can be adapted and adopted across geographies and sectors.
Working with Ecosystems: Collaborating for Systems Change
We bring together diverse local actors—grassroots organisers, youth, elders, civil society, businesses, institutions—to co-create solutions rooted in their realities. Through trust-building and participatory methodologies, we help them surface challenges, map power dynamics, and form lasting coalitions.
Participatory Grant-Making: Shifting Decision Making Power
We facilitate funding processes in which local actors decide priorities and allocate resources—removing unnecessary bureaucracy and shifting decision-making power to local organsations and activists best placed to lead. As a regranting foundation, we ensure full legal compliance while keeping processes lean and community-centered.
Participatory Leadership Development: Skills for Systems Change
We collaborate with local actors who aim to thrive—not by imposing tools, but by walking alongside. Through co-creation labs, peer learning, and mentorship, we work together for individual leadership and organisational development—especially among youth, women, and underrepresented groups.
Participatory Learning and Knowledge Sharing: Understand what works
Each ecosystem generates valuable learning. We work with communities in documenting their insights using participatory methods and their own languages. We co-create knowledge products that are owned by those who lived the experience, and shared in ways that inspire others.
Joynt Movement Building: Spreading New Ways of Working
joy∞untu is not about scaling an organisation, but amplifying a movement. We connect local voices with global spaces, promote power-shifting practice across the sector, and collaborate with local organisations and activists to become advisors and co-trainers in other regions.