Updates from SAGE FUND & Thoughts on Creating Space for Collective Reflection
In May, SAGE Fund Executive Director, Daria Caliguire, joined 75 labor leaders from around the globe for a convening on workers’ rights. She came back energized and inspired, noting the importance of creating space for collective reflection — something that feels rarer, and yet more necessary, than ever in the current moment.
The gathering offered attendees a chance to step back from the daily demands of movement work and engage in expansive conversations with fellow activists and allies — many of whom we would not otherwise have the chance to meet.
One noteworthy exchange that Daria was excited to share with the team centered on economic inequality as a driving force of democratic erosion — and, in turn, on the powerful role the labor movement can play in mobilizing workers to advance economic equality, confront the concentration of corporate power, and build a countervailing force against democratic backsliding.
SAGE co-facilitated a workshop with colleagues on connecting worker-led organizing with capital strategies — mobilizing investors to press companies to uphold workers' rights. We highlighted points along the investment chain that could be leveraged for change. This session generated real appetite for cross-sector exchange on deploying these tactics in worker-led corporate campaigns.
This gathering left Daria with a renewed conviction that the spaces where we pause, connect, and think together are not a luxury — they are where new, innovative strategies are born and alliances are formed.
We look forward to bringing these threads into our work in the months ahead.
FROM OUR GRANTEES
News from our grantee community we think you should know about…
A Mining Company Loses Its Bet
For 14 years, the women-led Peaceful Resistance La Puya has maintained a round-the-clock camp blocking the entrance to the El Tambor gold mine north of Guatemala City. Their deep concerns that they have about the mine's potential impacts were vindicated when a World Bank arbitration panel ruled that Guatemala owes nothing to Kappes, Cassiday & Associates, the Nevada-based company that sued for nearly half a billion dollars after courts suspended the mine. It's a rare community victory in an investor-state dispute system designed in corporations' favor — and a testament to the power of sustained peaceful resistance. Read the full story from Earthworks.
A Deadly Chemical Trail in the DRC's Cobalt Belt
Four independent scientific studies published by RAID, AFREWATCH, and Source International document deadly pollution around The Democratic Republic of Congo's industrial copper-cobalt mines which provide 70% of the world's cobalt supplies. They found toxic dust exceeded WHO air quality limits at every site monitored, water contaminated with arsenic, lead, and uranium, and children among the most exposed. As one resident put it, "We are being killed slowly." The groups are calling on mining companies to fund an urgent, independent health assessment and clean up pollution at its source. Read the full findings from RAID.
From the Streets to the UN: The Rise of Kenya's Waste Pickers
Waste pickers collect, and sort Kenya's waste. They recycle what they can to keep plastic out of Kenya's rivers and soil, yet this work goes largely unrecognized, unprotected, and underpaid. A new 18-minute documentary from the Centre for Environment Justice and Development (CEJAD) in partnership with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) follows their journey from Nairobi's dumpsites to the negotiating tables of the UN Global Plastics Treaty, where they've organized to demand formal recognition and a just transition. Wastepickers are not just part of the solution — they are the solution. Watch the documentary now on YouTube.
ICYMI: Goldman Environmental Prize Bolsters Theonila Roka Matbob's Fight For Mining Justice
Theonila Roka Matbob, a SAGE-Fund nominee and Indigenous community leader from Bougainville, Papua New Guinea was named a 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize winner. Roka Matbob led the campaign that compelled Rio Tinto to formally acknowledge the devastation left behind more than three decades after it abandoned its Panguna mines. As lead complainant in a landmark human rights case, she set a powerful precedent for how mining-affected communities can seek justice. Watch her speak about her journey and her acceptance speech at the Goldman award ceremony.
ON OUR RADAR
A few things we've been discussing, sharing or enjoying internally at SAGE Fund we think you should see…
This article on the current global economic model and its failure to deliver a decent life for millions of people around the world resonates deeply with our team and feeds into the larger analysis on the global economy we've been conducting.
The book Blood Will Flow which describes in heartbreaking detail how Total wilfully ignored signs that its natural gas project in a volatile region of Mozambique would be a magnet for a brewing insurgency and failed to protect the community and its own workers when attacks did occur.
This article explores the broader conversation about AI's impact on labor and how that conversation should expand beyond predicted massive loss of jobs to include issues like deepening workplace inequities and "inhumane" worker surveillance becoming the new norm around the world.