By Joshua Amponsem, B de Gersigny, Laura García, and Nathan Méténier
‘‘Irrespective of the powers that create climate challenges, youth create space for hope. We continue to prove these powers wrong when we show up, and we continue to create change within our communities.’’
— Jhannel Tomlinson, Global Greengrants Next Generation Climate Board Advisor and founder of GirlsCARE, Jamaica
Hope is not passive; it’s an act of resistance. In a context of rising temperatures, growing fascism, transphobia, and repression of social movement organizing, where it is challenging to feel hopeful, young climate justice leaders at the grassroots level are boldly leading critical intersectional work. From running for office to exercising their civic duties, from providing humanitarian relief to demanding land rights, these movements exemplify relentless hope, fostering democratic participation and advancing climate justice—often against incredible odds.
Youth movements prove hope is a practice, not just a value. To stand in hope now is to hold firm to the belief that grassroots movements have always been—and still are—the key to solving the world’s interconnected crises. Maintaining hope in the face of widespread despair and systemic failures is an act of defiance and resistance. It is a deliberate and courageous choice to look beyond immediate problems. It’s a choice to show up every day and invest in the power of people to build, dream, imagine, and organize.
However, these movements are chronically underfunded, and creating a funding network to fill that gap is at the heart of both the Youth Climate Justice Fund (YCJF)’s and Global Greengrants Fund’s missions. We share a joint commitment to fund youth movements that transform hope into action every day. These movements build systematically, center marginalized leadership, transform systems of harm into systems of repair, and think long-term. As complementary funders, investing in young people is an investment in our future and in building a more connected, vibrant planet.
Stories of Relentless Hope in Action
The youth-led movement groups YCJF and Global Greengrants support carry the torch of relentless hope globally, creating scalable, effective climate solutions and building democratic, sustainable futures.
A few examples of YCJF and Global Greengrants Next Generation Climate Board grantee partners seeding hope:
Intergenerational Indigenous Dialogues in Colombia
In Colombia, youth-led movements are cultivating hope for regenerative futures by nourishing intergenerational connections among the Nasa peoples. The jaw, a plant the Nasa have long used to build flutes important to their culture, has rapidly become scarce due to monoculture farming, cattle ranching, and climate change. To revitalize the jaw’s place in Nasa culture and promote care for the jaw’s ecosystems, Kiwe’ Uma’ Cultural Education Process hosted a community-based learning process where elders taught youth about the jaw’s cultural significance and how to care for, harvest, and craft flutes from it.
The Kiwe’ Uma’ Jaw Project highlights how youth are creatively building just futures centered on right relationship with the Earth. By weaving past, present, and future, they sustain hope for humanity’s continued harmony with ecosystems and with one another.
Building Youth Leadership in Tanzania
As young people create transformative futures, they must develop inclusive storytelling tools and effective communication strategies that promote narrative change and ensure that diverse experiences influence the climate agenda.
In 2024, YSO Tanzania launched the Media4Climate Advocacy Initiative, a capacity-building program through which 30 youth participants learned how to present complex climate science in an accessible and engaging manner. They took their learnings beyond the workshop, incorporating them into radio shows, leading trainings in their communities, advocating for climate justice at COP16, and more.
The workshops were an investment in brighter climate futures, training youth to bolster hope through storytelling and bring their communities along with them towards justice.
Grassroots Leadership for an Inclusive Climate Future
Youth-led movements understand the intersections of global challenges better than anyone—because they live them every day. Among them is UN1FY, a collective in Nepal that supports young people with disabilities in leading and sharing research on sustainability, climate change, and social justice. They have reached more than 600 young leaders through capacity-building sessions, advocacy for inclusive disaster risk reduction practices, and strengthened collaboration between municipalities and national stakeholders.
Their persistence led to a historic breakthrough in 2024. In collaboration with local authorities, UN1FY successfully advocated for a standalone section on disability in Nepal’s COP29 position paper, the first time disability has been explicitly addressed in this global process. Reflecting on the journey, they shared, “From advocating for disability-inclusive policies at COP29 to empowering youth and marginalized communities through capacity-building workshops, we’ve seen how collective efforts can drive meaningful change.”
Protecting Nature, Preserving Culture
In Latin America, young people are at the forefront of biodiversity conservation, environmental education, and sustainable development. In Brazil, Caatinga Biosphere Reserve Youth (RBCA), through their Coopera Flora Azul project, worked alongside youth from quilombola, Indigenous, and rural communities to organize multiple educational activities. They engaged more than 1,400 young people and fostered active participation in conservation initiatives, from school programs to building a community nursery for native seedlings.
Because of their dedication, this year Coopera Flora Azul was one of 100 winners of the “UNESCO x SEVENTEEN: Going Together – For Youth Creativity and Well-Being” award. Reflecting on the achievement, Project Coordinator Laiza de Carvalho Lima said, “Being recognized by UNESCO shows that even in the most forgotten territories, there is youth power capable of transforming the world.’’
Seeding Resilient and Relentless Hope through Philanthropy
While the power of grassroots movements to effect deep change is undeniable, funding remains insufficient. YCJF’s recent Youth Climate Funding Study shows that, in 2023, less than 2% of global philanthropic funding was allocated to climate change mitigation. Within this already small pool, youth-led climate justice initiatives received an even smaller portion. Between 2022 and 2024, only 0.96% of grants from the largest climate foundations supported youth-led climate justice efforts. If movements are already demonstrating impact with such limited resources, imagine the untapped potential that interdisciplinary, transversal support from across philanthropy could unlock.
Together, the philanthropic collaboration between YCJF and Global Greengrants supports a funder ecosystem that combines a trust-based track record with fresh momentum: Global Greengrants provides a structural backbone and movement infrastructure through its 30-year track record and decentralized advisory network, while YCJF brings in youth-centric capacity, innovation, and movement-building energy, pairing grantmaking with context-based capacity strengthening through mentoring, peer learning and collaborative impact evaluation, an emerging approach in the field. This complementarity not only amplifies resources and reach but also enhances inclusivity, responsiveness, and strategic alignment across generations and geographies. In doing so, the partnership stands to catalyze transformative outcomes—supporting emerging leaders, strengthening local capacity, and driving sustained systemic change—thereby embodying the promise of climate justice and movement-building.
Across the world, young leaders are developing innovative climate solutions in bold and creative ways. They find hope in the everyday moments, the connections within their communities, and the collective actions that keep them moving forward. Hope grows when philanthropy steps in to trust their vision and support their work, giving them the resources to make change happen on the ground.
As Dhrstadyumn Khera, from the There Is No Earth B group in India said as part of YCJF’s Relentless Hope video series campaign:
“In today’s time, with shrinking civic spaces, hope is something that is quite scarce, so I cling on to it as hard as I can. What brings me hope is community spaces, is small actions by people […]”
Carrying Hope Forward
Over and over, youth-led grassroots movements prove the power of hope as a transversal, political strategy. Global Greengrants Fund and the Youth Climate Justice Fund are committed to supporting grassroots movements that meet this promise, defend land and life, and reshape the trajectory of our democratic institutions and societies. This moment of rising authoritarianism and climate crisis, while challenging, also presents an excellent opportunity for a profound transformation of the political and economic systems that have brought us to this point.
Youth-led movements are already leading the way into that transformation. Imagine what more they can do if the broader climate philanthropy ecosystem takes our lead, stands with them, and kindles their commitment to relentless hope.