Young leaders advancing potential climate solutions could win $1 million grants
Youth-led climate groups are getting a $25 million injection from a philanthropic collaborative that hopes other funders will follow their lead in supporting solutions created by younger generations grappling with a future marked by increasing temperatures and rising sea levels.
Despite recent upticks in donations to nonprofits combatting climate change, Enlight Foundation President Xin Liu said emerging leaders on the front lines of the crisis are not getting enough of that money. So, she and The Patchwork Collective are offering $1 million multi-year grants to 25 community organizations led by 15- to 35-year-olds.
'There's a little funder stigma of trusting youth, trusting young funders, trusting their capacity, their ability to lead," Liu said.
'They're really quite often very innovative and creative. And very much close to the problem, which drives them to come up with really impactful solutions," she added. "As an older generation, we have a responsibility in helping them, empowering them, to scale their work, too.'
The award is open to anyone globally who is tackling a broad range of climate issues including education, justice, resilience, conservation, sustainable agriculture and disaster preparedness. Applicants have until Sept. 22 to enter the open call run by Lever for Change, a nonprofit affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation.
The competition is part of Enlight Foundation's spenddown strategy. The nonprofit — created by Liu and Chinese tech billionaire Duan Yongping to fund education equality and youth empowerment — plans to give away all its resources in the next eight years.
Liu said the foundation won't be able to sunset without collaborations like this one. Lever for Change, which has rallied its donor network to unlock $2.5 billion across 16 open calls, made for a perfect partner. The Patchwork Collective — a family philanthropy founded by Marie and Benoit Dageville that funds grassroots programs developed by communities to address their own issues — voluntarily contributed $5 million after learning about the competition.
Lever for Change President Kristen Molyneaux said everyone has a role to play. More than a dozen young advisors gave feedback on the open call's design and will help with peer review, according to Liu. Youth-led organizations and climate experts are welcome to participate in the external evaluation panel. Liu is inviting more funders to join because she said each additional $1 million will allow them to benefit another awardee.
'The people who are most invested in this are the people who are going to be bearing the burden of climate change in their future,' Molyneaux said. 'So, they understand the importance of this issue and how to mobilize their communities.'
The length of the multi-year grants will be tailored to the recipients' needs. Recognizing that some organizations might not have the capacity to accept all that money at once, Liu said 2- to 5-year periods are 'fine.'
Enlight Foundation will also do more than just write a check. Liu promised to provide mentorship and connections 'to really watch them flourish.'
'I am very excited, especially during this very uncertain time for young people around the world,' Liu said. 'They are going to build a much better and brighter future when they are engaged.'
___
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP's philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
23 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Shipping is one of the world's dirtiest industries – could this invention finally clean up cargo fleets?
An industrial park alongside the River Lea in the London suburb of Chingford might not be the most obvious place for a quiet revolution to be taking place. But there, a team of entrepreneurs is tinkering with a modest looking steel container that could hold a solution to one of the world's dirtiest industries. Inside it are thousands of cherry-sized pellets made from quicklime. At one end, a diesel generator pipes fumes through the lime, which soaks up the carbon, triggering a chemical reaction that transforms it into limestone. With this invention, Seabound, the company behind it, hopes to capture large amounts of carbon directly from the decks of cargo ships, and help clean up this strikingly polluting industry. More than 50,000 cargo ships are at sea at any moment, producing 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions – more than aviation. Behind all this is Alisha Fredriksson, a young entrepreneur who once dreamed of being a doctor but reached a turning point in her career after reading a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that detailed the global implications of 1.5C (2.7F) v 2C (3.6F) of warming. 'That's when I realised that everyone around the world will be affected by the climate crisis, and so if I cared about large-scale social impact, the best thing I could do would be to help tackle it,' says 30-year-old Fredriksson, chief executive of Seabound. 'Then the question became 'well, how?'' Trials have shown that her invention can scrub most of the carbon from the ship exhaust, filtered through its lime-pebbled interior. Ultimately, the goal is to have this device strapped to ships across the world's oceans, she says. After identifying the problem she wanted to solve, the real work began. She and her co-founder, Roujia Wen, hit on the idea of scaling down the existing quicklime-based carbon-capture technology typically employed at industrial plants. They then made a prototype, and attracted about $4m (£3m) in funding from investors. Some of this came from shipping companies. 'It all happened really quickly. Suddenly we had money, and we had to go build it,' says Fredriksson. 'I think people were ready for a solution.' Since then, successive prototypes of the Seabound container have taken her from the company's test-bed in east London, to Turkish shipyards, the deck of a 3,200-container ship, and down the Suez canal on a three-week voyage to test its efficiency. This showed that a Seabound unit can capture 78% of all the carbon from the exhaust that is pumped through it, and 90% of the sulphur, a toxic air pollutant. The latest prototype is being built to the dimensions of a standard 20ft (5.9 metre) shipping container, so that it can seamlessly slot in with cargoes on deck, Fredriksson says. The design allows the stacking of several containers like regular cargo, and enables the ship to incrementally increase carbon capture in line with its journey length and decarbonisation goals. Once in port, the limestone-filled units can be substituted for containers of fresh quicklime. This product is made by heating limestone to high temperatures in kilns, an energy-intensive process that also releases CO2 from the limestone, making production extremely carbon-intensive. Companies are trying to make quicklime using kilns heated with renewable energy, or developing methods to capture the released CO2 so that it doesn't enter the atmosphere. Seabound is working to source this 'green' quicklime, Fredriksson says. 'There isn't currently a large quantity of green lime available globally, however there are many companies in the lime industry that are working on producing this – both large incumbents and various startups.' Some critics are concerned that decarbonising technologies could distract from solutions, such as zero-emission ammonia fuel or wind-powered innovations, that are essential to push the shipping industry to net zero. 'The potential for short-term use of carbon-capture retrofits on existing vessels should not become a justification to extend the lifespan of fossil fuels or delay the shift to truly sustainable alternatives,' says Blánaid Sheeran, climate diplomacy policy officer at Opportunity Green, a nonprofit organisation focused on gaps in global climate policy. But Fredriksson believes Seabound's technology could support this transition. In April, at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization, UN member states agreed to a landmark deal that will start charging ships for every ton of emissions above a threshold. That threshold will gradually decrease to push the industry towards green fuels. Seabound slots into this new regulatory landscape, according to Fredriksson, by enabling ships to decarbonise their fuels, thereby lowering their emissions, and gradually adjust to the rules by adding more containers over time. 'We can grow the amount of carbon capture as the regulations ramp up,' she says, noting that the invention can start cleaning up ships now as green fuels filter through the industry. Like most startups, Seabound faces the challenges of scaling up. But with each unit priced in the tens of thousands of pounds, Fredriksson says their offering is she has already has a commitment from one company to fit the first full-scale containers on to its ships this year. Her vision for the future is clear: 'It would be that we're on hundreds to, hopefully, thousands of ships, and we've got hubs in all the major ports around the world,' she says. This article was amended on 26 June 2025 to add some further context on quicklime's carbon footprint, and quotes from Alisha Fredriksson addressing this issue that were originally omitted from the published article.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Disturbia
Rank 54 Annual sales growth over three years 86.04% Womenswear retailer Fans of grunge and gothic-style clothing will be drawn to the unconventional outfits available from Disturbia. The husband-and-wife team Francis and Helen Major, 46 and 44, started their alternative brand in Northumberland in 2003. They have since gone global, with exports accounting for nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of total annual sales of £35.1 million in the year to January — nearly double the previous year's turnover. Expansion has been helped by securing an investment in 2023 of an undisclosed sum from Refined Capital Partners. Richard Leeson, 36, now leads the business as chief executive. Explore the Sunday Times 100 — interviews, company profiles and more
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
How Europe's militaries depend on US supplies; a big inflation burger; and summer holiday trends
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch! In this week's newsletter we have charts on strangers talking for 30 minutes, the unequal distribution of AI computing, when different European countries go on holiday, how dependent European countries are on US arms sales, various maps and charts about war in the Middle East, and more. Woodside's North West Shelf gas project on the Burrup peninsula in Western Australia is one of the world's largest liquefied natural gas ventures. In May the Labor government approved an extension for the project to run for an additional 40 years, from 2030 to 2070. The extension is expected to be responsible for about 87.9m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year in the decades ahead, after the gas has been exported and burned. Our latest One Big Chart puts that number into context. 1. The global AI divide This chart from the New York Times shows how the AI boom is unevenly distributed, with certain countries and companies dominating the market for AI datacentres: You can read more here. 2. How Europe's militaries depend on the US Europe's militaries still overwhelmingly rely on US-made weapons and equipment, according to Guardian analysis of stockpile data that raises doubts about ambitions for European-led rearmament. This visual analysis by my colleague Alex Clark shows the source of arms sales to European countries over the years, in the context of the US pushing for increased military spending by Nato members. Check out the full piece for more charts and analysis. 3. ♪ We're all going on a summer holiday ♪ Consider this chart a mental holiday from the rest of news. Sebastian Gräff from the European Correspondent has visualised when holidays peak in different European countries: Northern European countries go on holiday earlier, with breaks more spread out, while southern European countries go on holiday later, and with holiday times more concentrated over the same weeks. Sign up to The Crunch Our data journalists showcase the most important charts and dataviz from the Guardian and around the web, free every fortnight after newsletter promotion 4. It's a big inflation-burger The winners of the Information is Beautiful awards have been announced, and this piece from the ABC in Australia took out the silver in the Business Analytics category. We have featured this piece before, but it reminded me again of how much I liked it! You think you're getting a straightforward explainer about inflation (which you are), but then it turns into an illustration of how multinational companies are able to manipulate intellectual property payments to themselves to send money offshore. How effective was the US attack on Iran's nuclear sites? A visual guide Mapping the conflict between Israel and Iran Mideast conflict imperils a tiny waterway vital to the world economy It's another banger by Alvin Chang for the Pudding! This visual essay illustrates the participants and effects of an experiment which paid participants to have a 30-minute conversation with a complete stranger. It is fascinating, and I love the ASCII art style. Enjoying The Crunch? If you like what you see and think you might know someone else who would enjoy it, please forward this email or send them a link to the sign up page. If you have a chart tip or technical issue viewing this newsletter, please reply to this email. If you are a Guardian supporter and need assistance with regards to contributions and/or digital subscriptions, please email
