In Accra, Idun Benjamin Kojo watches farmers struggle with unreliable rainfall and depleted soil that limits what they can grow. His response: a hydroponic farm that bypasses these constraints entirely. But Idun didn’t stop at simply growing vegetables; he built a computer device from scratch that allows him to monitor the farm remotely, automate watering schedules, and analyze plant behavior in real time. “I can see which crops are thriving, adjust nutrients from my phone, and catch problems before they destroy a harvest,” he explains. The system works: boosting yields, extending growing seasons, and proving that high-tech agriculture doesn’t require high-tech budgets. Yet while global climate philanthropy has tripled its investments in recent years, Idun’s innovation runs on minimal resources and self-taught engineering. “If we wait for funding from afar, communities will continue to go hungry, and see the young people I work with; they will have no jobs,” he says. This contradiction defines climate action in the Global South. With COP30 Belém and Davos now weeks behind us, the momentum around youth inclusion and leadership risks fading into familiar patterns. The 2025 Youth Climate Justice Study makes one thing clear: recognition is abundant, but investment remains scarce. Less than 1% of grants from major climate foundations reach the movements driving change on the frontlines. If we are to truly fund the future, global philanthropy must channel resources toward youth led solutions, movements already transforming communities with minimal budgets.
The Numbers Tell the Story
We have worked with young people leading grassroots climate initiatives, from food security projects and waste-management cooperatives to renewable energy pilots and community-based adaptation programs. They are photographed as symbols of hope and invited to speak at conferences. Yet behind that visibility lies a stark reality: most lack the financial resources to sustain the solutions they are celebrated for.
The 2025 Youth Climate Justice Study submits that in 2023, less than 2% of total global philanthropic funding was directed toward climate change mitigation. Within that already limited pool, initiatives that focus on youth-led climate justice occupy an even smaller share. Between 2022 and 2024, just 0.96% of grants from the largest climate foundations supported youth-led climate justice efforts.
The study equally submits that “Over three years, 41 of the largest climate foundations made just 307 grants to youth-led climate organizing.” Of these foundations, nearly three-quarters—29 in total—made five or fewer youth-focused grants during the entire period.”For most major funders, youth leadership isn’t even a consistent consideration. Also, youth movements in the United States receive a disproportionate share of this already limited support, and studies submit that achieving parity would require an estimated USD 381 million in annual funding to youth-led groups in other countries. The gap reflects not a shortage of youth leadership elsewhere, but where philanthropic trust is structurally placed: in familiar, established institutions rather than frontline movements.
Understanding the Funding Patterns
Large foundations overwhelmingly channel climate funding through established Northern intermediaries—international NGOs with audited financials, institutional infrastructure, and English-language fluency. This arrangement is typically justified as “risk mitigation.” In practice, when foundations route funds through familiar intermediaries rather than directly to frontline groups, they maintain oversight of narrative, strategy, and implementation while addressing their fiduciary concerns. The current system prioritizes foundation fiduciary requirements while the communities facing climate impacts continue to operate without adequate resources to respond. What philanthropy frames as “due diligence” often functions as a barrier that maintains Northern decision-making authority over Southern climate action.
Global South youth groups face barriers that extend far beyond funding scarcity. Standardized application frameworks designed around Northern institutional norms clash fundamentally with how grassroots organizations operate. Young organizers with profound community embeddedness and direct climate experience find themselves disqualified by technical requirements—grant proposal formats, policy jargon, donor reporting protocols, and international banking requirements, that have little to do with their effectiveness on the ground.
Youth-led networks are frequently deemed to lack “absorptive capacity.” In practice, “capacity” often functions as a circular barrier: limited funding prevents institutional growth, and the absence of institutional features: audited statements, full-time staff, and multi-year budgets, is then cited as justification for continued exclusion. The pattern creates a cycle where resources flow primarily to those who already have them.
What’s Already Working
A small number of organizations/funders prove that different models deliver results. The Youth Climate Justice Fund (YCJF), The Iris Project, UMI, and youth-led organizations like the Green Africa Youth Organization, among others, are funding climate initiatives in regions where most major foundations do not operate. YCJF has supported approximately 115 initiatives to date, with a funding distribution that inverts the typical philanthropic geography: 18.8% of its grantmaking has gone to East Asia and the Pacific, 9.8% to South Asia, 8.9% to Sub-Saharan Africa, and 3.6% to North America. This allocation pattern deliberately centers regions where climate impacts are most severe and where youth-led movements receive the least support from traditional funders.
The Iris Project funds youth-led climate solutions across diverse geographies often overlooked by mainstream philanthropy. In Mongolia, they support Breathe Mongolia, a project tackling the country’s severe air pollution crisis, where toxic air causes over 7,000 deaths annually and economic losses equivalent to 7.2% of Mongolia’s GDP. In Ghana, The Iris Project funds the Waste Gobbler project, which addresses severe water pollution in Accra’s rivers through direct intervention, using mechanical collection systems and strategically placed floating barricades to remove waste from heavily contaminated waterways physically.
The Green Africa Youth Organization, a youth-led organization, has provided support for young people and groups leading change across the continent. In Ghana, they fund a grantee partner developing geopolymer precast components for construction: a sustainable building material innovation that reduces the carbon footprint of the construction sector. In Madagascar, they support a community working to farm seaweed as a means of tackling food insecurity and poverty, creating alternative livelihoods while addressing climate vulnerability in coastal communities.
UMI supports youth-led organizations across the Global South, building their capacity and investing in their growth when mainstream philanthropy will not. Their approach centers on trust-based funding that enables organizations to develop the institutional infrastructure that other funders demand as prerequisites. When youth-led organizations receive trust-based support, they deliver tangible, scalable outcomes. “Absorptive capacity” is not an inherent limitation—it is a product of systemic exclusion. As Desmond Alugnoa, co-founder of the Green Africa Youth Organization, observes, “I have always believed that the best solutions and the best minds are usually the ones closest to the problem.”
Beyond these models, grassroots movements across the Global South are already delivering the solutions philanthropy seeks to support. In Dar es Salaam, Laurel Kivuyo’s Climate Hub Tanzania transforms waste into clean-energy briquettes, reducing deforestation and creating livelihoods for women and youth in informal settlements. In northern Ghana, Ella and Racheal are working with rural communities to understand heat emergencies as a climate crisis and document how rising temperatures disproportionately affect women’s health and agricultural productivity. In Accra, Transform Transport Accra pilots low-cost e-mobility solutions, collaborating with city officials, transport unions, and local youth to make sustainable transport accessible in dense urban neighborhoods. In Kenya, Steve Misati works with local communities to protect wildlife and foster biodiversity through community-led conservation models.
These are proven interventions waiting to be scaled. The challenge is not a lack of models; it is the gap between what exists and what gets funded. As Mathias Charles Yabe, Founder of Akrofresh, shares, “It’s not a lack of ideas holding youth in the Global South back but rather the lack of access. Climate funding still flows where the narratives are louder, not where the needs are greatest.”
Critical Shifts
The 2025 Youth Climate Justice Study identifies critical areas where philanthropic practice, regrantors, and movement builders must align to equity and justice. Building on this analysis, we propose specific, measurable targets that move these from aspirational goals to operational requirements for a system committed to prioritizing frontline leadership.
1. Decentralized Grantmaking at Scale
When nearly three-quarters of major foundations make five or fewer youth grants over three years, the current model is clearly insufficient. Each of the 41 largest climate foundations should commit a minimum of 15% of their climate portfolios to regional, youth-led regranting institutions within three years, rising to 25% by 2030. These intermediaries must be governed by youth leaders from affected regions, with full authority over strategy and grant allocation. This means foundations relinquishing control over implementation while maintaining accountability through transparent reporting. It means funding organizations like YCJF, Green Africa Youth Organization, and similar entities to operate at the scale the crisis demands—not as pilot projects, but as a core strategy.
2. Trust-Based Funding as Standard Practice
Multi-year, unrestricted grants allow youth-led initiatives to build the organizational capacity that foundations currently demand as prerequisites. Every foundation should commit to ensuring that at least 60% of youth-focused grants will be multi-year (minimum two years) and at least 70% will be unrestricted or lightly restricted by 2027. Trust-based funding does not eliminate accountability—it right-sizes reporting requirements to match grant size and organizational stage. A $20,000 grant to a grassroots network like The Wellness Project, which supports young people leading justice work by providing restorative retreats, emotional support, and spaces to reflect, process, and build resilience, should not require the same documentation as a $2 million institutional grant. With this type of support, grassroots organizations can hire staff, build systems, and plan beyond survival mode, ensuring young leaders have the care and resources they need to sustain the critical change they are driving in their communities.
3. South-Led Governance with Decision-Making Power
Only 11.7% of climate mitigation grants focused on justice, a direct reflection of who sits at decision-making tables. Youth leaders from the Global South must hold a minimum of 30% of board seats at major climate foundations by 2030, with full voting rights and representation on grants and investment committees. This is not advisory participation; it means compensating youth leaders for governance work at rates commensurate with other board members. It means shifting who determines what counts as “credible,” “scalable,” or “high-impact.” It means decision-makers being accountable to the communities most affected by climate impacts, so funding patterns align with need rather than proximity.
Measuring What Matters
Success requires accountability. By 2027, we should see the percentage of climate grants reaching youth-led organizations rise from 0.96% to at least 10%; the number of foundations making zero youth-focused grants drop from current levels to zero; geographic distribution of youth funding reflecting climate vulnerability rather than philanthropic proximity, with at least 60% going to the Global South; and youth leaders holding decision-making power at every major climate foundation.
The Path Forward
As Jeffery Adusei Opoku, a food systems specialist, points out, “It’s not about proving ourselves to donors. It’s about giving young people the space and resources to act on what they already know works in their communities.” The data is clear, the solutions exist, and the practitioners are ready. The question is whether philanthropy is ready to restructure systems to match the scale and urgency these movements require.
Dorcas H. Amanor
Dorcas H. Amanor is an eco-feminist, education activist, and strategic communicator working across climate philanthropy, gender equality, and peacebuilding. She is the founder of Girls Can Lead Africa, a non-profit advancing education access and girls’ leadership across the continent. Her work bridges policy and grassroots action, connecting funders with frontline movements to design equitable, community-driven solutions. She is currently pursuing an MA in Peace Studies and International Relations.
Nii Noi Omaboe
Nii Noi Omaboe is a development professional with nearly a decade of experience across Africa’s green transitions, circular economy, urban mobility, human rights, and inclusive climate action. He currently advises the Iris Project, a UK-based philanthropy supporting young climate and restoration leaders worldwide, and serves as Engagement Manager of the Ghana National Plastic Action Partnership. He holds a Master’s in African Studies with a specialisation in African Sustainable Communities.
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