Collaborative Futures supports community-led responses in contexts of war, repression, and surveillance. Together with frontline humanitarians, rights defenders, and journalists, we co-create systems, technology, and platforms that strengthen connection and collective action.

CF IS supporting community-led action during times of crisis

Welcome to our website, currently under construction

CF IS supporting community-led action during times of crisis

Collaborative Futures supports community-led responses in contexts of war, repression, and surveillance. Together with frontline humanitarians, rights defenders, and journalists, we co-create systems, technology, and platforms that strengthen connection and collective action.

Welcome to our website, currently under construction

WE WORK ACROSS FOUR PILLARS

  • We deploy secure communication systems with communities facing shutdowns and surveillance.

    ShoutSMS

    We are rolling out ShoutSMS, a lightweight encrypted messaging app built with civic groups facing internet shutdowns, surveillance, and digital repression. ShoutSMS enables secure, offline communication–including text and images–over SMS networks, helping people stay connected, share critical information, and organize safely when traditional channels are blocked or compromised. Early SHOUT community and partner testing and rollouts have been ongoing. The app will be released publicly by the end of 2026.

    BRACE

    (Building Resilience and Circumvention in Emergencies) is a framework co-created with civic groups to help prepare for and respond to internet shutdowns. Powered by an active community of practice and designed as a global tool, it supports teams in designing practical, context-specific contingency plans based on their real needs and risks. The BRACE team also supports risk-informed deployment of shutdown circumvention tools, including satellite-based connectivity. Recent actions includes collaboration with 20 local humanitarian, media, and human rights groups in Sudan to amplify their reporting and advocacy and reconnect communities cut off by warring parties.

  • We co-design practical tools to power mutual aid, coordination, and collective action.

    Mutual Aid Portal

    The Mutual Aid Portal is a digital public good co-created with the Localization Hub and Sudanese mutual aid groups to support community-led coordination, cash transfers, and crisis response. The Portal currently tracks the full implementation cycle of 3,027 community projects totalling $20.4M in funding since July 2024, delivered with around 1,100 Emergency Response Rooms across 17 states, including 1,948 fully completed projects.  Built around the F-System developed by the Emergency Response Rooms, the Portal supports local responders to plan activities, channel cash to communities, report on delivery, and evidence impact end to end, with lightweight, responsible AI tools that strengthen this work without extractive data practices. Rooted in trust and local control, our open digital systems help communities move faster, stay accountable, and act on their own terms.

    Volunteer Protection Commons

    The Volunteer Protection Commons is a new initiative for the protection of local humanitarians delivering aid in communities affected by the war in Sudan, and for the documentation of attacks or threats against these volunteers and the people they serve. We work with the Emergency Response Rooms in Sudan to collectively record the practices local volunteers have already developed; then we co-create anticipatory playbooks, decision protocols, and digital tools that accommodate those practices. Delivered in collaboration with DKH and the International Humanitarian Law Centre, with funding from the German Federal Foreign Office.

    Key Infrastructure for Networks (KIN)

    Through our Key Infrastructure for Networks (KIN) initiative, we co-host cross-border learning and solidarity platforms with mutual aid groups across different contexts. Working closely with Hit Tine, the Sudan Emergency Response Rooms, and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy, we facilitate peer-to-peer exchanges between Sudanese and Burmese civic actors to share practical approaches to open-source innovation, grassroots organizing, and engagement with international humanitarian actors. We also collaborate with mutual aid associations in Ethiopia and Syria to document existing community practices and help humanitarian organizations adapt their approaches, strengthen partnerships with grassroots actors, and prepare more effective crisis responses.

    Community-Led Early Warning Systems

    We are co-developing Community-Led Early Warning Systems in Gedaref, Sudan’s breadbasket, which faces growing pressures from climate change and conflict. Together with NIDAA, the Sudan Human Rights’ Hub, IOM, and local partners in Gadaref, we document existing community practices, co-design climate-conflict early warning systems, support conflict resolution and resource management committees, and connect local knowledge with more formal climate, environmental, and human rights data to strengthen anticipatory action. To date, we have engaged 20 communities and 237 community members to co-design a watchlist and response protocols, to be monitored through a dashboard for warning alerts, and are in the process of rehabilitating physical convening spaces where communities can review data, follow agreed protocols, resolve disputes, and take collective action to mitigate conflict.

    Stablecoin Cash Transfers

    We piloted Stablecoin Cash Transfers with Sudan’s Emergency Response rooms to support community-led aid financing. Designed for low-connectivity, conflict-affected environments where conventional banking systems are absent, unreliable, slow, or expensive, this approach enables faster, lower-cost, and traceable direct transfers for local responders. Building on the lessons from the pilot, we are now partnering with NIDAA, a Sudanese NGO, to expand digital cash transfers to two additional states in Sudan.

  • We co-develop community-owned evidence systems for justice and memory.

    The Collaborative Archive Program (CAP) develops shared infrastructure for communities documenting human rights abuses and cultural memory under pressure. Building on our work with the Sudanese Archive and Sudan Human Rights Hub, which manages hundreds of thousands of open source videos and photos, we are now working with Activate Rights, Bangladesh Protest Archive, and grassroots groups to expand collaborative archiving. The program provides a shared hub, practical tools, technical guidance, funding pathways, and peer exchange to help communities build their own collections. We are seeking partners to strengthen this infrastructure and support community-led archiving across contexts.

  • We craft media and technology that reclaim stories and advance justice.

    Gundi (Glue in Swahili) is a co-invention hub and creative methodology we built with the East African media innovation orgs, ONA Stories and Black Rhino. We piloted the initiative over two years to learn the best ways civil society organizations, creative technologists, and storytellers across East Africa can work together to collaboratively develop public-interest technology and storytelling projects addressing social justice challenges. The pilot expanded social justice networks and created new partnerships and collective action across sectors by exposing participants to technologies, storytelling practices, and collaborative approaches they would not otherwise have encountered. Working with our partner IRIS, we plan to publish the research and lessons learned this year while implementing Gundi practices across Collaborative Futures projects.

WE WORK ACROSS FOUR PILLARS

  • We deploy secure communication systems with communities facing shutdowns and surveillance.

    ShoutSMS

    We are rolling out ShoutSMS, a lightweight encrypted messaging app built with civic groups facing internet shutdowns, surveillance, and digital repression. ShoutSMS enables secure, offline communication–including text and images–over SMS networks, helping people stay connected, share critical information, and organize safely when traditional channels are blocked or compromised. Early SHOUT community and partner testing and rollouts have been ongoing. The app will be released publicly by the end of 2026.

    BRACE

    (Building Resilience and Circumvention in Emergencies) is a framework co-created with civic groups to help prepare for and respond to internet shutdowns. Powered by an active community of practice and designed as a global tool, it supports teams in designing practical, context-specific contingency plans based on their real needs and risks. The BRACE team also supports risk-informed deployment of shutdown circumvention tools, including satellite-based connectivity. Recent actions includes collaboration with 20 local humanitarian, media, and human rights groups in Sudan to amplify their reporting and advocacy and reconnect communities cut off by warring parties.

  • We co-design practical tools to power mutual aid, coordination, and collective action.

    Mutual Aid Portal

    The Mutual Aid Portal is a digital public good co-created with the Localization Hub and Sudanese mutual aid groups to support community-led coordination, cash transfers, and crisis response. The Portal currently tracks the full implementation cycle of 3,027 community projects totalling $20.4M in funding since July 2024, delivered with around 1,100 Emergency Response Rooms across 17 states, including 1,948 fully completed projects.  Built around the F-System developed by the Emergency Response Rooms, the Portal supports local responders to plan activities, channel cash to communities, report on delivery, and evidence impact end to end, with lightweight, responsible AI tools that strengthen this work without extractive data practices. Rooted in trust and local control, our open digital systems help communities move faster, stay accountable, and act on their own terms.

    Volunteer Protection Commons

    The Volunteer Protection Commons is a new initiative for the protection of local humanitarians delivering aid in communities affected by the war in Sudan, and for the documentation of attacks or threats against these volunteers and the people they serve. We work with the Emergency Response Rooms in Sudan to collectively record the practices local volunteers have already developed; then we co-create anticipatory playbooks, decision protocols, and digital tools that accommodate those practices. Delivered in collaboration with DKH and the International Humanitarian Law Centre, with funding from the German Federal Foreign Office.

    Key Infrastructure for Networks (KIN)

    Through our Key Infrastructure for Networks (KIN) initiative, we co-host cross-border learning and solidarity platforms with mutual aid groups across different contexts. Working closely with Hit Tine, the Sudan Emergency Response Rooms, and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy, we facilitate peer-to-peer exchanges between Sudanese and Burmese civic actors to share practical approaches to open-source innovation, grassroots organizing, and engagement with international humanitarian actors. We also collaborate with mutual aid associations in Ethiopia and Syria to document existing community practices and help humanitarian organizations adapt their approaches, strengthen partnerships with grassroots actors, and prepare more effective crisis responses.

    Community-Led Early Warning Systems

    We are co-developing Community-Led Early Warning Systems in Gedaref, Sudan’s breadbasket, which faces growing pressures from climate change and conflict. Together with NIDAA, the Sudan Human Rights’ Hub, IOM, and local partners in Gadaref, we document existing community practices, co-design climate-conflict early warning systems, support conflict resolution and resource management committees, and connect local knowledge with more formal climate, environmental, and human rights data to strengthen anticipatory action. To date, we have engaged 20 communities and 237 community members to co-design a watchlist and response protocols, to be monitored through a dashboard for warning alerts, and are in the process of rehabilitating physical convening spaces where communities can review data, follow agreed protocols, resolve disputes, and take collective action to mitigate conflict.

    Stablecoin Cash Transfers

    We piloted Stablecoin Cash Transfers with Sudan’s Emergency Response rooms to support community-led aid financing. Designed for low-connectivity, conflict-affected environments where conventional banking systems are absent, unreliable, slow, or expensive, this approach enables faster, lower-cost, and traceable direct transfers for local responders. Building on the lessons from the pilot, we are now partnering with NIDAA, a Sudanese NGO, to expand digital cash transfers to two additional states in Sudan.

  • We co-develop community-owned evidence systems for justice and memory.

    The Collaborative Archive Program (CAP) develops shared infrastructure for communities documenting human rights abuses and cultural memory under pressure. Building on our work with the Sudanese Archive and Sudan Human Rights Hub, which manages hundreds of thousands of open source videos and photos, we are now working with Activate Rights, Bangladesh Protest Archive, and grassroots groups to expand collaborative archiving. The program provides a shared hub, practical tools, technical guidance, funding pathways, and peer exchange to help communities build their own collections. We are seeking partners to strengthen this infrastructure and support community-led archiving across contexts.

  • We craft media and technology that reclaim stories and advance justice.

    Gundi (Glue in Swahili) is a co-invention hub and creative methodology we built with the East African media innovation orgs, ONA Stories and Black Rhino. We piloted the initiative over two years to learn the best ways civil society organizations, creative technologists, and storytellers across East Africa can work together to collaboratively develop public-interest technology and storytelling projects addressing social justice challenges. The pilot expanded social justice networks and created new partnerships and collective action across sectors by exposing participants to technologies, storytelling practices, and collaborative approaches they would not otherwise have encountered. Working with our partner IRIS, we plan to publish the research and lessons learned this year while implementing Gundi practices across Collaborative Futures projects.