What is the Roots & Routes Fund?
The Roots & Routes Fund is a collaborative fund that supports individual young changemakers and young people-led organisations based in England who are working to improve climate justice.
It combines the funds, expertise and networks of the Blagrave Trust, Co-op Foundation, Energy Saving Trust Foundation, OVO Foundation, and Impatience Earth.
Why does it exist?
Youth-led climate action is critically underfunded. Recent research shows that only 0.96% of grants from major climate foundations go to youth-led climate initiatives. This fund was created to address that gap, recognising that young people, especially those from communities most affected by climate injustice, are often overlooked by traditional funding streams. By working together we hope to reduce the administrative burden placed on young people often applying for multiple grants from like-minded funders, having to complete multiple reports for these funders, and having to hold different relationships. Our partnership aims to reduce this burden and together we believe we can enable more impact than the sum of our parts.
For more information on the Fund, please visit this page.
What’s happened so far?
We came together as a group of funders in early 2025 to explore how we could reduce barriers to funding for youth-led climate justice work, and put much-needed resources behind it. We developed a pilot project to test our processes and funding approach, which is running until March 2026.
In 2025, we:
- Made 6 grants of between £9500 – £20,000 to 6 youth-led climate justice organisations for one year.
- Made 3 grants of £10,000 to individuals through a restricted contribution to Blagrave’s ‘Challenge and Change’ programme.
- Developed a comprehensive wrap-around support offer including £1,000 that’s restricted to organisational development and £1,000 that’s restricted to wellbeing.
In early 2026 we plan to make:
- 5 further grants of £19,800 to 5 infrastructure organisations that were nominated by young people from the youth-led climate justice organisations we funded in 2025. By doing this we hope to build the ecosystem that supports youth-led changemaking in climate justice.
Since our last update in April 2025, we have welcomed 6 inspirational youth-led organisations working on the climate crisis to Roots & Routes.
We are proud to announce partnerships with:
- AWETHU: A school for climate justice changemaking, empowering Black African and Caribbean youth aged 18–24.
“The AWETHU School of Organising is a transformative educational initiative dedicated to empowering young Black people through political education and tools for grassroots organising at the intersection of Climate Justice and Black Liberation. Each year a cohort of 12 young people dedicates 8 Saturdays to the program – this year we were able to run it thanks to the generous grant from Roots & Routes! The young people walk away empowered to organise in their communities, from solidarity initiatives with communities in the Niger Delta to local initiatives dealing with education, housing and more, they are ready to transform their worlds. We are grateful for the grant and look forward to running the program again next year!”
- Earth Tenders: A Black-led land justice initiative in South London, reclaiming land for community use and food growing.
“Earth Tenders is a Black-led organisation committed to strengthening local food systems and community health for the long term. At the core of our work is a deep celebration of land practices, traditional knowledge systems and relationships with the earth. We are delighted to have been funded by the Roots & Routes Routes fund! This helps resource ourselves so that we can resource our community and enable us to continue to deliver impactful and radical land and horticulture programming.” - The Land Collective: Supporting underrepresented young people to pursue careers in sustainability in the built environment sector.
“The Land Collective is a social enterprise focused on social mobility. We support young people from underrepresented backgrounds to access, grow and advance in careers across property and the wider built environment sectors.” - Youth Climate Collaborative UK Climate Youth Hub: Building youth leadership through training, convening, and community-building in the climate justice sector.
“YCC is a global youth-led organisation creating pathways to involve and sustain youth, ages 35 and under, in the climate movement. The key aim of our UK hub is to regularly convene our 250+ youth community in the UK, both in-person and online, to map out shared challenges in scaling their climate work, encourage collaboration and reduce silos across sectors and generations.” - MAFIA Weekend: A majority LGBTQIA+ organisation using participatory storytelling to amplify underrepresented voices in climate justice.
“With support from The Roots & Routes fund, we have made our first hire, which is a major milestone for Mafia Weekend CIC. We are an intergenerational community interest company working with adults aged 18 to 30 and elders to explore climate action, identity, and creativity. Our name, short for ‘make a film in a weekend’, reflects our approach of moving quickly from idea to action and celebrating what we create together.
Alongside our community programmes, we also operate as a film production company, making documentary and fiction short films that centre real voices, real stories, and the relationships behind them. Collaboration, care, and creative experimentation guide all our work.
Our Create Up programme helps participants turn climate-related ideas and questions into tangible projects through workshops, mentoring, and collective learning.
The Story Gathering brings adults aged 18 to 30 and elders together to explore how storytelling shapes our lives and the futures we imagine. Through shared memories, deep listening, and co-created stories, we look at how the stories we inherit and share influence our sense of possibility and what new stories might help our communities navigate uncertainty with strength, connection, and clarity.”
- Time to Grow: A grassroots group promoting food sovereignty and local growing as tools for climate and social justice.
Based in Walthamstow, Time to Grow is a CIC that forms part of the Waltham Forest Food Growers Network. They campaign for better food growing rights for communities in Walthamstow and enable stewardship over land for their local communities too.
Challenge and Change
We look forward to sharing more information on the individuals funded through ‘Challenge and Change’ in the coming months.
What’s coming next?
2026
- We want to shift our power to a youth-led governance structure and embed their knowledge into our decision making. We think the best way to do this is to recruit a board of young advisors to make these decisions. We want to work with this board in service to young people doing climate justice work.
- In our pilot year, we didn’t want to let ‘perfect be the enemy of good’. We will work with our young advisors to learn what worked and what didn’t, so we can continuously improve our approach
2027
- We want to expand our funding to enable young people to make meaningful funding decisions that strongly contribute to supporting climate justice across England.
- We want all young people who are working on climate justice projects and activities to know where they can get funding from. Our ambition is to fund every youth-led organisation and individual working on climate justice that meets our base criteria.
- We want young people working on climate justice to receive support that meets their needs and sustains their changemaking. We understand that burnout is a huge problem in our sector, and the infrastructure surrounding young changemakers must be strengthened to support them.
- We want our peers in the funding sector to recognise that climate justice = social justice, and they can meet their own social justice goals by increasing their funding of youth-led climate justice work.
If you’re a funder interested in supporting youth-led climate justice movements we’d love to connect. Please contact Marie@blagravetrust.org for details of how you can contribute.
