Founded in 2016, the Torchlight Collective is an international, multidisciplinary consulting group supporting global health and human rights donor agencies and foundations, UN agencies, NGOs, INGOs, and youth-led initiatives to ignite visionary, equitable impact. We wield the collective power of 40 consultants from over 20 countries with expertise in climate justice, global health, gender justice, and social movements. Our members share a commitment to locally-based, community-driven solutions that uphold equality, equity, and human rights through communication, movement building, organizational strengthening, and research and evaluation.
Torchlight also serves as an incubator / accelerator for youth-led / emerging, feminist, and/or grassroots initiatives.
We share an ethos of hard work, learning, integrity, joy, and care. The individual consultants who make up the Collective bring decades of experience and a passion for working with and for organizations, networks, and movements that are led by those most affected by social justice issues.
The Torchlight Collective maintains a lean management model in order to deploy teams that respond quickly to the dynamic needs of our clients and partners. Typically, the Collective assembles and engages a team of members (as subcontractors) whose expertise and experience are aligned to achieve our client’s objectives, and then provides the necessary coordination and oversight throughout the duration of the contract. Torchlight’s equity-informed infrastructure and professional support provide the project coordination and oversight necessary to ensure that our impactful work is executed in collaborative and transformative ways.
OUR history
Many of us in the Collective met while supporting global youth movements as leaders of youth-led organizations, networks, coalitions, and initiatives. We are proud of what youth movements have accomplished over the last 15 years, and so much of what we learned as advocates came from experience in those spaces. We also know that there is much more to be done at every level and in every sector to support these movements, beyond just youth.
We have seen the well-intentioned efforts on the part of governments, UN agencies, donors, and civil society organizations to support these movements to thrive. Yet, there are often gaps in the impact that these global initiatives have on the lives of young people, particularly those who aren’t being heard.
While we keep youth movements at the center of our work and continue to locate opportunities to work in service of young people, many of the same principles of meaningful youth participation and engagement apply to the work we’ve taken on as a Collective over the past 8 years. We seek to support liberation movements and all efforts to center the experiences of marginalized groups, key affected populations, and grassroots initiatives, which most often continues to include young people.