I have a dream that one day we will all have access to opportunities….regardless of anything….So, every night, before I sleep, I think about my day and ask [myself]: how did I really contribute to the change?

And, until we reach the society that I dream, I will keep raising my voice. I will keep dreaming. This is resistance.

– Anisie Byukusenge, Rwanda, Our Resistance: Stories of Disability Rights Activists      

What becomes possible when we practice imagination as a discipline of hope and freedom—a tool for collectively believing in and building new worlds?

And what might we reclaim, if we refused to mistake the inherited conditions of this world for the limits of what is possible, while drawing from the understanding that worldbuilding is an intergenerational practice—one carried by those who, even amid broken and violent worlds, have chosen love over despair, faith over cynicism, and justice over resignation?

Imagination and dreaming are forms of power. They allow us to expand our sense of possibility beyond current systems of violence, injustice, ecological and systemic crisis, and oppression. To dream of radically different worlds is to refuse the normalization of path dependency and dystopia.

Imagination is not separate from transformation—it is one of the essential conditions that makes transformation possible. Girls and young feminists have long understood this.

For much of history—and still today—the world has tried to narrow girls’ horizons. It asks them to dream smaller, and at times, not to dream at all. Systems of oppression blocks dreaming by flooding the mental and emotional space where dreaming would happen with constant urgency, scarcity, surveillance, and crisis response, so there is no interior quiet left to imagine from.

Yet amid co-constitutive systems of oppression—misogyny, patriarchy, ageism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, casteism, ableism, and others—girls and young feminists across the globe continue to dream and imagine different futures. They are resisting, envisioning justice, and creating new ways of living, relating, and organizing. Their visions are blueprints for the worlds they are already building through daily acts—both large and small.

Here, we offer insights drawn from our latest research, Dreaming and Worldbuilding: Insights, Strategies, and Calls to Action Grounded in the Dreams and Power of Girls and Young Feminists, and make the case for why investing in their dreams matter. As co-authors, we have spent years documenting hundreds of examples of girls’ and young feminists’ dreaming and worldbuilding across Argentina, India, Jordan, Kenya, Romania, Tanzania, the United States, and beyond through play sessions. Our methods use a Dreaming and Worldbuilding Game designed to create space for participants to imagine new worlds through play. The results are often imagined realities that are radically different from the current systems underway with recurring themes such as mutuality, care, joy and wellbeing.

Read the full article about girls' imagination and worldbuilding by Juliana Roman Lozano, Asha Athman, Nyawira Wahito, Laura V, Jody Myrumand, and Akinyi Rose at Nonprofit Quarterly.