Emerging Climate Champions Award 2025: Empowering Youth-Led Climate Solutions

The Emerging Climate Champions Award is a groundbreaking world Open Call that seeks to highlight and assist the subsequent era of local weather leaders. Sponsored by the Enlight Foundation and The Patchwork Collective, this $25 million initiative will present versatile, multiyear funding of $1 million every to 25 youth-led organizations from around the globe. The Award is designed to catalyze significant local weather motion by younger leaders driving modern, community-rooted options within the face of an escalating local weather disaster.

Addressing the Youth Funding Gap in Climate Action

Youth-led local weather organizations proceed to function with disproportionately restricted sources. Despite the rising urgency of the local weather disaster and the essential position younger folks play in shaping its options, solely a fraction of worldwide local weather philanthropy reaches youth-driven efforts. In reality, world funding for climate-related initiatives represents lower than 2% of complete philanthropic giving, and youth-led teams obtain a mere $14.2 million in annual grants.

The Emerging Climate Champions Award seeks to redress this imbalance. It gives greater than monetary assist — it acknowledges and elevates youth management, integrating suggestions from younger local weather activists and honoring the variety of cultural and neighborhood contexts inside which they function.

Who Can Apply?

The Award is open to youth-led organizations from across the globe, with “youth” outlined as people aged 15–35who maintain key decision-making roles (e.g., govt management or board positions). Eligible organizations should:

• Have operated for at the very least two years by the registration deadline (August 15, 2025)

• Be community-led with confirmed expertise, measurable impression, and robust potential for long-term outcomes

• Work on sturdy local weather options, together with however not restricted to:

  • Climate justice and environmental advocacy

  • Education and motion constructing

  • Science and expertise

  • Economic alternative and neighborhood resilience

  • Conservation, agriculture, catastrophe preparedness, and extra

Organizations from underrepresented and traditionally underfunded teams — together with Indigenous- and women-led initiatives, grassroots campaigns, and teams based mostly within the Global South — are particularly inspired to apply.

Key Dates & Application Process

• Registration Deadline: August 15, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. ET

• Application Submission Deadline: September 22, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. ET

• Participatory Review: November–December 2025 (Applicants will consider friends)

• Evaluation Panel Review: Early 2026 (Scoring shall be normalized for equity)

• Awardee Announcement: By Fall 2026

Before making use of, full the Organization Readiness Tool and discuss with the Open Call Rules to assist decide eligibility and to make sure that your group is a powerful match for the Open Call. Take a while to evaluation the application, which is accessible in PDF kind here.

To start or resume your application, log in at: manager.submittable.com/login

Once signed in, chances are you’ll entry and proceed your application. You may view your application, as soon as full, by way of your Submittable account. If you may have misplaced or forgotten your password, please follow the instructions here.

For help, contact: climatechampions@submittable.com

Inclusive Language and Accessibility Support

Understanding that language generally is a barrier to entry, the Award organizers provide a number of assist mechanisms. While all purposes have to be submitted in English, translated supplies can be found in Spanish, French, and Bahasa Indonesia, and applicant webinars will embrace French and Spanish interpretation in addition to ASL. Free translation instruments are additionally beneficial to assist non-English audio system in making ready their purposes.

About the Donors

Enlight Foundation champions youth empowerment, training fairness, and youth-led local weather options. Their method facilities on versatile, multiyear grantmaking to allow social innovation, alongside collaboration with peer funders and civil society actors for systemic change.

The Patchwork Collective is a family-led philanthropic initiative funding community-driven responses to world challenges. Their work focuses on selling fairness and justice in local weather, well being, and social methods by placing native leaders on the coronary heart of resolution design and implementation.

Final Thoughts

The Emerging Climate Champions Award is greater than only a grant — it’s a platform for recognizing the imaginative and prescient, braveness, and effectiveness of youth leaders who’re confronting one in every of humanity’s most urgent challenges. By enabling transformative, youth-led local weather motion, the Award helps not solely native resilience but additionally a extra equitable and sustainable world future.

For full application particulars, go to the Emerging Climate Champions Award web site and observe updates by means of the official website.

For extra alternatives, please go to the web site of Opportunities For Youth.