Are We Leveraging Our Collective Power?

Do we understand our collective and individual power? 

When was the last time you dreamed together?

These were the questions we opened with during a collective space in the Financing for Feminist Futures convening in Spain last month. They are simple, but they carry weight: building worlds that affirm our lives requires more than understanding oppression—it demands that we recognize the power we already hold, claim it boldly, and imagine the futures we seek and dream of. We know the fight is long and relentless. But do we truly know our capacity to shape, transform, and build the worlds we want?

In this article, we extend an invitation and call to action: to dream collectively and build the worlds we imagine. What would those worlds look like? What would they feel like? What would they sound like? Have you asked yourselves—and the communities you are part of?

Dreaming is a discipline across our generations and communities

What we continue to hear is that people are exhausted, afraid, feeling as if there are no options, frozen—living as if we are in a singular and unique apocalyptic moment. And yet, when we look back over a century and more of struggle, the story is very different. Generations before us led, resisted, and built infrastructures—networks of care, knowledge, and possibility—that made even the most impossible dreams tangible.

They refused to be paralyzed by fear. They understood that power is never simply given; it must be claimed collectively, nurtured across time, and enacted through disciplined hope, material solidarity, and consistent practices that bring people together to imagine and work.

Feminist movements, in particular, have shown us what resilience can look like: trust-based, creative, and adaptive infrastructures built when no one else would; strategies that sustain possibility even under extreme precarity.

We see it in the networks that secured bodily autonomy and access to resources long before decriminalization, in movements advancing gender justice and dismantling caste, race, and class oppression, in education systems created to ensure generations had access to critical knowledge despite bans and repression, and in today’s emergency response efforts across Palestine, Sudan, Haiti, and beyond—efforts led predominantly by women, youth, and girls. 

The challenges and backlash we are experiencing today is no accident; they are the predictable response of systems designed to resist change by all means. And yet, they are also proof of what happens when power is claimed, shared, and exercised collectively across generations. Over time, these efforts do more than survive—they shift laws, transform social norms, and build tangible infrastructures of care, solidarity, and possibility that outlast any single moment of struggle.

What is our responsibility?

Reclaiming power, especially collective power, is not a one-time act. It requires imagination, discipline, and sustained action. Dreaming together is not mere aspiration—it is method, strategy, and resistance. It is the practice of envisioning futures that are otherwise impossible under systems that seek to dominate and suffocate our capacity to breathe, to create, and to become.

We see examples everywhere:

• Dolly Ahmad, a young woman leader from the state of Jharkhand in East India, resided in a small village. The road to her village was riddled with potholes and was a big barrier to girls’ mobility. Dolly dreamt of a smooth freshly paved road! Formal representations to the local elected representative had fallen on deaf ears. Finally, Dolly with encouragement from her girls’ collective, crafted a poem on the issue. The poem was based on a popular song from the Indian Film Industry and cleverly wove in humour and satire. She read it out to the elected representative who was invited as a chief guest at a girls’ football tournament and even as he guffawed, he got the central message. He allocated the requisite funds. Dolly and her friends’ dream came true!

• Pushpa, a young leader from India shares how she always felt the pinch of discrimination inside her home. The maximum and best portion of all food was given/set aside for her brother for many years. Often she had to wait (even if she was hungry) till he had eaten before she could help herself. She dreamt of good food! After many years, and sharing these thoughts in her girls’ collective she slowly started articulating this dream with her mother and then in her family. This dialogue led to change and slowly but surely she has started claiming her share and choice of food, regardless of whether or not her brother is present.

• ‘My dream was to become a nurse but despite a lot of effort I could not clear the examination and my dream remained incomplete. Then I decided to change my dream, after all what I really dreamt of was to stand on my own two feet. I decided to apply for the post of a clerk in a government office. I studied hard and today I am able to support myself and my family’, Anubha, India.

These examples show that collective dreaming and disciplined action are inseparable. Power, if not exercised intentionally, will be used against us. Our responsibility is to claim it, steward it, and direct it toward building worlds that sustain life, justice, and possibility.

Our task is clear: reclaim our power, dream boldly, and turn those dreams into shared, sustained, actionable realities. We return to the question and invite you to ask yourselves—and the communities you are part of: What does the world you dream of look like, feel like, sound like, and smell like? Get specific. Materialize it. Identify the concrete actions needed to make it real. 

Tools like the Dreaming and Worldbuilding Game, UDAAN (Udaan English Facilitator Guide and Udaan: Short Videos), and the many resources curated in the Feminist Dream Space library offer frameworks and guidance for engaging in this work with your community and team. We encourage you to make this a consistent practice. Reclaiming our collective power—and our right to dream and create worlds that affirm our shared wellbeing—is essential, not only for today but for generations 100+ years from now.

Notes:

• Some names in this article have been anonymized as a security measure to protect the privacy of the girls and young feminists whose stories are shared.
• The ‘Udaan’ booklet of poems and stories and short videos have been created by girls residing in rural India as a resource for other girls to explore themes of gender, sexuality, desires, dreams and aspirations. Originally created in Hindi the have been reproduced/subtitled in English to allow reach to wider audiences. This initiative has been led by Point of View (https://pointofview.org) and supported by the Girls First Fund.