Last week, Philea hosted their Annual Conference in Šibenik, Croatia. Alliance polled our audience last week to discover which session they’d most like to read about – and it ended in a tie! One was on ‘Building infrastructure to support resilient youth climate movements: Lessons from across Europe’ which you can read below, and you can learn about the other winner here.

This topic of youth was one of four sessions to emerge from the 2023 conference, alongside the closing plenary panel. Whilst not heavily attended, those who had come to listen and learn were active and engaged participants.

With presentations from Christian Vanziette, co-founder of Makesense; Nisha Owen, executive director at Global Greengrants Fund and Katie Hodgetts, founder and executive director of The Resilience Project, the atmosphere was one of frustration at the short-sightedness of funders.

Strong and responsive youth movements need sound infrastructure in order to survive longterm, and to flourish. There needs to be not just investment in activism around climate, but to support around the projects, too – in the movements’ mental health, building their capacity and skills, and working to counteract the extraordinary burnout rate.

Vanizette’s discussion was charged, fast and frustrated. Growing up in French Polynesia, his home country is directly suffering under the climate emergency and disproportionately at risk of rising sea levels. After a decade funding start-ups and securing investments into the millions, Vanziette’s attention then turned to the climate crisis, activism, and pushing everything he had into solving it.

Hodgetts spoke passionately about the highs and lows of activism; leading the UK Youth Climate  Coalition for five years, coordinating mass mobilisations, a delegate at COP and delivering speeches alongside Greta Thunberg. However in the years since, after experiencing burnout and witnessing the lack of support on offer to youth activists, Hodgetts founded the Resilience Project. Support remains limited – the Project has applied for almost £500,000 in funding over the last twelve months – and has so far received just £26,000.

Owen was the last to speak. Global Greengrants Fund has an advisory board – The Next Generation Climate Board – brings together climate activists under the age of 30 to identify grantees and award funding. The board was the first of its kind.

Many of the communities supported by GGF are at the margins of decision-making, with youth activists sitting squarely in this. The Fund’s global advisory network, as well as participatory funding model, supports these activists to build for change from the ground up.

The feeling in the room was one of tangible anxiety – a knowledge that working on climate justice and activism cannot stop while funders are allowed the luxury of reckoning with their own privilege. Participants in my breakout group were concerned about whether or not the actions of youth activists were always ‘legal’ – others were confused that activists themselves would refuse their funding. ‘They won’t take money from us because our origins are from a bank! We’ve never had our money refused before.’

Jon Cracknell, director of The Hour Is Late, also revealed a recent study commissioned by a group of youth climate leaders and supported by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.

The time is now to enact more youth-friendly grantmaking practices, and increase financial support to social movements.

Amy McGoldrick is the Head of Marketing, Advertising and Events