As Catalyst closes, we want to introduce you to people who are building the tech justice infrastructure the network will still need. 

Spaces to meet, shared analysis, practical tools, and funding that follows movement priorities. 

People and organisations who might help the network connect to places where energy, learning and resources are growing.

So we’d like to introduce you to Weaving Liberation, an initiative focussed on supporting and resourcing digital justice organising in Europe. They build power, solidarity, and shared vision that helps movements organise for tech justice. 

They’re also preparing a participatory digital justice fund, due to launch in the first half of 2026. Participatory means decisions about funding sit closer to communities (rather than sitting only with institutions).

“Weaving Liberation is stewarding a programme of interventions… to create the conditions for digital justice organising in Europe.”
— Salmana Ahmed, Co-Director, Weaving Liberation​

Weaving Liberation also advised us during our Kindling grant application assessment process, helping us sense-check our final shortlist when we got stuck.

We’re grateful to Salmana Ahmed and Laurence Meyer for their direct input in sharing Weaving Liberation’s work with the Catalyst Network. 

The Weaving Liberation team

→ Laurence Meyer (co-director) brings a background in law and anti-racist and Afro-feminist organising. She focuses on power: who’s in the room, who’s missing, and what becomes ‘normal’ in policy decisions. 

← Salmana Ahmed (co-director) brings a background in philanthropy and digital rights grantmaking. She pushes for resource justice – changing how decisions and money move in philanthropy.

The current team also includes Adelaide Hirwe (Operations Lead), Esra Özkan (Movement Doula) and Ari Robey-Lawrence (Communications Lead). Weaving Liberation also has an Accountability Committee that includes Anasuya Sengupta, Luam Kidane, and Joan Monique Steijns.

“We’re trying to… make digital justice organising an irresistible movement.”
— Laurence Meyer, Co-Director, Weaving Liberation​

What Weaving Liberation is doing in 2026

Weaving Liberation is building a set of connected interventions: regranting, convening, peer learning, and longer-term experiments in how resources move.​

A participatory digital justice fund (launch planned for first half of 2026)

Their upcoming grant programme will fund groups working at the intersection of technology and justice – across racial, economic, environmental, disability, migrant, transfeminist and queer justice.​

“We are in the process of designing and… going live with our first fund… it will be the first Europe-wide participatory fund resourcing digital justice organising.”
— Salmana Ahmed, Co-Director, Weaving Liberation​

Digital Liberation Retreat (September 2026, Bosnia)

Every 18 months they host the Digital Liberation Retreat. The retreat is a five-day space for cross-movement connection, knowledge and practice sharing, and relationship-building – held in a regenerative setting.​

“We’re bringing together 70-plus people in Bosnia again in September… [to] activate imaginations towards what we want, as opposed to just resisting what we don’t want.”
— Salmana Ahmed, Co-Director, Weaving Liberation​

Life-affirming visions of technology, collective safety and liberation

Weaving Liberation runs a peer practice learning programme led by their Movement Doula, Esra Özkan, rooted in abolitionist principles and practice – asking what safety looks like without policing, and what communities need to build care and accountability. This work grows from years of organising and analysis on how policing uses technology, and it supports people to build practical alternatives.​

“How do we move beyond just an analysis of the harms… and… think about operationalizing… differently?… What does a world without policing look like? What do infrastructures of care look like?”
— Salmana Ahmed, Co-Director, Weaving Liberation​

Resource justice and solidarity infrastructures

“Resource justice” is a core framing for Weaving Liberation’s work. Resource justice means shifting who controls money and material resources, and how decisions about them get made.

They are currently working with other intermediaries, artists and organisers as part of the Solidarity Infrastructures collective to explore how to mobilise resources to strengthen movements’ financial autonomy and resilience.

One early intervention in this work is exploring acquiring and stewarding land and space (in Europe and Africa) as shared infrastructure for organising, imagining, and refuge – locally rooted and accessible transnationally.​

“Our first intervention… is really thinking about… acquiring land or space… to have a space that we can collectively own and steward… a space for organizing, a space for imagining, a space for refuge.”
— Salmana Ahmed, Co-Director, Weaving Liberation​