What do those supporting people facing digital violence need to sustain their work over time? A new resource from FAU LAC brings together the voices and insights of activists from 12 Latin American countries and places care at the heart of the conversation about how we fund movements.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, digital technologies provide essential spaces for organizing, building community, and defending rights. They are also used to harass, control, and silence women and gender and sexually diverse people. In response to these forms of violence, feminist and LGBTQ+ networks across the region have developed approaches that combine technological knowledge, risk assessment, emotional support, information protection, and, where possible, legal assistance.
Sustaining Those Who Protect focuses on an aspect of this work that receives less attention: the people who make this support possible. Drawing on the voices of activists connected to 12 Latin American countries, the resource shows that sustaining these responses also requires caring for those who carry them out and ensuring the material conditions they need—from rest and psychosocial support to digital security, salaries, and protection for their teams.
For those of us who fund movements, these experiences raise a fundamental question about where we direct resources and how we move them. At FAU LAC, we have learned that feminist funding can better respond to movements’ realities when it is rapid, flexible, and grounded in trust. Funding care does not mean diverting resources away from the work: it means helping create the conditions that sustain it.
