Volunteer Eligibility

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At the Embodied Futures Collective (EFC), we understand liberation as a practice shaped in community, through the hands and hearts of those most impacted by the world as it is and most committed to the world as it could be! We believe freedom is authored collectively, grown through relationship. We also believe, following the teachings of pleasure activism, that liberation is not only what we fight for, but how we choose to live, relate, feel good, and create together right now.

Thus, our hearts and our work are grounded in radical care, youth wisdom, collective memory, interdependence, and the revolutionary truth that a future worth living must be grown together. We refuse to be isolated, silenced, or fragmented.

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Why We Center Youth

EFC has been, is, and will always be youth-led as a political stance. Youth have always been on the frontlines of liberation struggles, dreaming past the limits of what the State imagines possible, refusing the violences we’ve inherited, and building worlds that do not yet exist. Even our work, in particular, began in 2016 with kids.

To honor this lineage and protect the safety, agency, and brilliance of our communities, our core volunteer body includes people ages 13-30. Within this range, leadership remains youth-centered, shaped by young people’s voices, visions, and lived experiences.

Those who age out (31+) or who hold wisdom beyond our age range may be welcomed into advisory roles, but these roles are not guaranteed, inherited, or assumed. Advisors are invited by committees through consensus-based decision-making. Their responsibilities are clear:

• To support youth leadership, not direct it
• To strengthen our collective soil, not reshape it
• To offer knowledge without eclipsing the futures youth are cultivating

EFC embraces intergenerational learning, but never at the cost of youth liberation. After all, youth hold an untamed relationship to joy, imagination, play, and desire, the raw materials of liberation. Our pleasure, creativity, and curiosity are revolutionary forces that must be tapped into!

Who We Welcome In

While this list is not exhaustive, EFC warmly welcomes youth whose lives have been shaped—whether minimally or violently—by systemic marginalization, erasure, or exclusion. We honor the wisdoms that emerge from these experiences and the many ways people cultivate resilience, care, and imagination in their wake.

We especially invite youth who identify as:

Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color

• e.g., African American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latiné, South Asian, Pacific Islander, mixed-race youth
• EFC understands racial and ethnic identities as lived, community-held, structurally shaped realities, not distant ancestral claims or self-designations without grounding.
• How does racialization shape your lived experience, your safety, your opportunities, your embodiment, your community belonging, your daily reality?
• If you do hold distant ancestry and are seeking re-connection, healing, or understanding, you are, of course, welcome in our community, but not within identity-specific spaces reserved for those navigating the direct realities of, for example, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, or other racialized violences.
• Additionally, we recognize that some youth of color—including adoptees, diasporic youth, and/or those raised in “color-blind” or assimilationist environments—may not yet have the language to name their racialization. You are welcome here, too. Identity-specific spaces remain open to those who are materially racialized, regardless of whether others taught you to see such.