MEET THE ADVISORY COLLECTIVE SHAPING THE COMMUNITY NEST TOGETHER
A Community Nest shaped by our people
We’re excited to introduce the first members of The Community Nest Advisory Collective: 7 changemakers who will guide the purpose and growth of The Community Nest.
The Social Change Nest is a values driven, trauma-informed fiscal host. We tear down the barriers that prevent communities from creating change. We take care of the finance and administration, creating a safe and transparent way for groups to raise, manage and spend down funds, and ensure that nobody is put at risk in the process of doing so.
Whilst fiscal hosting is at the heart of what we do, we are building on this infrastructure withThe Community Nest, to convene space, broker relationships and build power across our network of fiscally hosted groups, so they can find each other, share what works and act in solidarity.
Why we are doing this
When piloting The Community Nest, we heard time and again about the impact of shrinking civil space, the criminalisation of community action, rising costs and funding cuts wearing people down and impacting grassroots groups’ spirit and work.
We saw that across the 700+ groups we work with, the skills and expertise grassroots groups need already live in the Ecosystem. So alongside the finance and administration support we provide, The Community Nest connects groups not just to each other, but to a movement, where they can share practices, build power and collectively analyse what’s working and what’s not.
The Community Nest exists for accompaniment, not intervention. Our groups lead the change only they can make, so the decisions that shape The Community Nest should not sit with us alone.
This starts with The Advisory Collective, who will support us in developing our vision, so that the work can flourish. Its members come from all different spaces: food sovereignty, climate justice, migrant solidarity, cultural strategy, philanthropy, mutual aid, and healing. They are from communities across the UK, and they will come together and meet for the first time in November.
How it will work
The Collective will share insights and expertise to influence our priorities, give feedback on the space and structures we design, and act as ambassadors for The Community Nest in their everyday work.
This will be an ongoing journey, and we want power to shift along the way. Initially The Collective will act as a trusted friend and advisor to the team, bringing ideas and challenges. Over time, we envisage The Collective moving into a strategic decision-making function regarding The Community Nest.
We commit to building trust, care and transparency into how we work and our decision-making. We will not replicate systems of oppression and exclusion.
Meet the Collective
Amira Elwakil
Amira Elwakil (she/her) has worked across the migrant and economic justice spaces for over ten years. Her experience spans organising and campaigning, training, governance, research and evaluation, where she has worked alongside grassroots groups, funders and infrastructure organisations to strengthen movements and build the conditions needed for sustainable social change. She brings a commitment to collective care, participatory pedagogy and anti-oppressive practice to her work. Amira has organised on issues including housing justice and access to healthcare and education for migrant communities. She is an accredited coach with an interest in critical approaches to coaching and has held a number of advisory roles including with funders and grassroots organisations.
Cara English
Cara English is the Glasgow-based founder-director at FiveforFive, a collective fund for trans women in the UK. Her career has largely been at anti-poverty campaigns, trans charities and LGBT organisations, working across participation, policy and communications. She believes firmly in the power of community and facilitating people power, and in enabling people to authentically and autonomously lead the decisions that impact their lives. When she is not working, she is likely busy writing her first novel, or walking round a park with a pastry.
Chupa Phiri
Chupa is a fundraising strategist, grantmaker, trainer, mentor and philanthropy practitioner with 26 years’ experience across the UK, Africa and internationally. Her work spans both sides of the funding relationship. She has partnered with grassroots and global majority-led groups and international charities, including organisations working on complex or misunderstood issues. She has also served as a trustee, assessor and consultant for funders including the Baobab Foundation and Comic Relief, as well as private foundations, participatory funds and lottery-funded trusts.
As founder of Oko Consultancy Ltd, she helps social-impact organisations and funders adopt more equitable, trust-based approaches to fundraising and grantmaking. Her practical fundraising training builds the skills, confidence and systems that organisations need to raise funds sustainably. Through mentoring, she supports fundraisers and leaders, particularly from global majority communities, to grow their practice and step into leadership. She also founded the Twikatane Community Foundation to resource community-led action and close the funding gaps facing locally led and “led by and for” organisations.
Guided by Ubuntu, Chupa is committed to shifting power in philanthropy so that communities closest to the issues lead the solutions and control the resources to deliver them.
Dawn Dublin
Dawn Dublin is a cultural strategist and social entrepreneur working across food sovereignty, Afroecology and community care. Her work builds resilient, community-led responses to structural inequity that honour heritage, strengthen collective wellbeing and reimagine food systems.
She serves in leadership roles with the African & Caribbean Heritage Food Network, where she co-designs strategy rooted in heritage foodways and Afroecology; Black Butterfly, where she co-developed Joyful Roots, a Black-led food sovereignty, land justice and cultural reforestation programme; and Better Food Traders, which supports locally rooted food businesses, putting people and planet first.
Jilna Shah
Jilna is an independent consultant working with grassroots groups, charities, CICs and funders on community development and organising, strategic development and anti-oppressive ways of working. Over the last two decades she has worked with a focus on racial and migrant justice, including co-running JRCT’s Rights and Justice programme and as CEO of Migrants’ Rights Network.
She is a qualified Craniosacral therapist and movement and meditation facilitator where she works with individuals and groups to tend to challenges like burnout, and to cultivate more ease, joy and wellbeing. She is inspired and guided by Black feminism, abolition and radical Buddhist teachings, and currently offers spaces for rest and renewal for global majority folks.
Maxine Thomas-Asante
Maxine is a thought leader in the UK cultural strategy field. She drives the Power of Pop Fund, a pooled fund supporting organisations who use arts, creativity and entertainment to advance justice. Maxine’s work is in service to the power of art and entertainment to mobilise mass audiences towards hopeful futures. Her work advancing justice has engaged both the education and funding sectors, as a researcher, consultant, facilitator, grant maker and, currently, fund lead. Her work proactively centres the voices of communities, from her earliest days in student politics to now, championing community voices through pop culture and narrative shift.
Peach Hoyle
Peach is a community organiser based in Cambridge. They work on a variety of issues including food justice, trans rights and environmental liberation. Peach loves to organise events, fundraisers and workshops that get people involved and talking. When they’re not organising, Peach is a researcher in religious studies.
A huge thank you to everyone who applied, to everyone we interviewed and to the community recruitment volunteers who shared their time to help us choose. The strength of interest showed us just how much appetite there is to shape this work together and we can’t wait to get started.
Join the conversation
Are you part of a group hosted by The Social Change Nest, or do you have ideas for The Community Nest? We would love to hear from you!
