The City of Madison has joined the grant fund Youth Climate Action Fund, according to an April 10 press release. The Youth Climate Action Fund is an initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, created to assist 100 mayors and cities across the world in funding climate solutions created by young people, ages 15 to 24 years old.
The grants acquired through this fund of $50,000 will be distributed through the youth program By Youth For Youth in partnership with United Way of Dane County and UW–Madison Extension, according to the press release.
Though younger perspectives are not always given a platform, the Youth Climate Action Fund aims to recognize the significance of young people’s ideas being at the center of addressing climate change, Madison out-of-school-time coordinator Nathan Beck said.
Part of the responsibilities of the MOST coordinator is to support the BYFY program, which has been funding young people’s ideas for over 30 years, with teens allocating funding for around 500 projects totaling nearly a million dollars, according to Beck.
“It’s a group of young people, teens from all across the county, who gather and decide on priorities and fund youth ideas to tackle big issues,” Beck said.
The teens set the priorities and then solicit ideas from other teens to find ideas to fund, according to Beck. In addition to climate change, this year’s BYFY members are focusing on issues like sexual assault and food insecurity. This year alone they have funded $26,000 worth of youth ideas through BYFY to tackle some of the priorities they set.
The program is in its very beginning stages, but the City of Madison and BYFY are working on creating a list of students and organizations to reach out to that could be interested, according to Beck.
“We want to ensure that we’re seeing ideas from Black and brown communities, from communities who are often most impacted by climate and who often are not given a platform for their ideas to be seen,” Beck said. “That’s an important thing that we want to do is intentionally recruit … and fund ideas led by Black and brown young people.”
College students can begin to get involved through an interest form, according to City of Madison Sustainability Program Coordinator Gabriel Saiz.
The official application should be sent out around early May, according to Beck.
“We know these additional funds will both seed actionable climate ideas that will improve our city and build the capacity of the next generation,” Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said in the press release. “One of the core challenges of young people today is going to be responding to the climate crisis, but rather than climate despair, we want to inspire climate action, and that’s what this initiative will do.”
Editors Note: This article has been updated to reflect that there are 100, not 101 cities in the Youth Climate Action Fund.
