What is the Roots & Routes Fund?
The Roots & Routes Fund is a collaborative fund that supports individual young changemakers and youth-led organisations based in England who are working on improving climate justice, and the infrastructure organisations that support them.
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.
Our progress since November 2025.
Since November we’ve been working on strengthening the ecosystem with five organisations providing infrastructure support to youth-led climate justice organisations and young changemakers. We recognise that the ecosystem of youth-led climate justice changemaking is in its infancy and requires a strong infrastructure base to support it.
The youth-led climate justice ecosystem is still developing and many groups rely on a small number of organisations that provide training, fiscal hosting, networks and pathways into the sector. In the second phase of our Fund, we have partnered with five infrastructure organisations, nominated by the youth-led groups already supported by the Roots & Routes Fund.
Choosing our infrastructure partners
Potential infrastructure organisations were nominated by at least one of the youth-led organisations we started funding in November 2025 (read about these partnerships here). Starting with a long-list, we assessed nominated organisations against criteria such as their legal structure, and the strength of their infrastructure support to youth-led climate justice groups. In March 2026, we provided a grant of £19,800 to each of the following five organisations:
Climate Majority Project – Nominated by MAFIA Weekend
Climate Majority Project works to strengthen the infrastructure for citizen-led climate action by supporting initiatives that help shift public and political engagement on climate. It provides funding, networks and strategic support to organisations working to build a broad societal majority for climate action.
The Movements Trust – Nominated by Youth Climate Collaborative
The Movements Trust provides infrastructure support to grassroots social movements by sharing its charitable status and helping movements access funding and resources. It works to remove structural barriers that prevent informal or emerging youth-led movements from receiving support.
Youth Environment Service – Nominated by MAFIA Weekend
Youth Environmental Service builds pathways into the environmental sector by placing young people in year-long paid roles within environmental organisations. The programme supports the capacity of host organisations while helping develop the next generation of people working on environmental and climate issues.
Bright Green Future – Nominated by MAFIA Weekend
Bright Green Future supports the development of future leaders in the clean energy transition through a structured programme for young people aged 16–19. It contributes to sector infrastructure by building skills, networks and career pathways for young people who are underrepresented in the environmental sector.
Organic Lea – Nominated by Time to Grow!
OrganicLea is a workers’ cooperative and community food project that supports local infrastructure for sustainable food production and distribution. Alongside growing and selling food, it runs training, volunteering and community programmes that help build skills and participation in a more just food system.
Plans for 2026
We want to see the youth-led climate justice movement continue to grow and thrive in 2026. We will not be running another funding round in 2026 but will be using the year to work more deeply with our inaugural cohort of changemakers and infrastructure organisations. We are hoping that by 2027 we’ll have gathered enough learning to better understand how the combination of all our approaches – funding individuals, movements, and infrastructure – works to strengthen the ecosystem of changemaking in the climate justice space for young people.
In Autumn, we are planning to recruit 5 young people to act as our advisers. Our Roots & Routes advisers will shape a new round of funding we are planning for 2027.
Another focus for 2026 is fundraising. We believe that funding youth-led climate justice movements enables us to meet both our social justice and climate commitments. Expanding funding for these organisations will ensure the climate justice leaders of the future are supported in their work and protected against burnout. If you’re a funder that’s interested in joining the Roots & Routes Fund, please get in touch with Marie@Blagravetrust.org for details of how you can get involved.
Learning from our pilot year
Alongside announcing our infrastructure partnerships, we wanted to share learning from our pilot year. This helped us deepen our understanding of youth-led climate justice. Here are some of the key things we’ve learned so far.
Learning about youth-led climate justice
- The youth-led climate justice sector is larger and more vibrant than we anticipated, made up primarily of grassroots groups.
- Many organisations describe their work as social justice rather than climate justice.
- Seventeen youth-led climate justice organisations met our criteria, but we only had the resources to fund six. This highlights the scale of unmet demand for funding in the youth-led climate justice space.
- These organisations tend to operate with smaller budgets and minimal infrastructure, correlating with barriers to sustainability.
- Only one of the ten shortlisted groups was a registered charity; many were CICs, CLGs or unincorporated collectives.
- A lack of internal infrastructure, such as financial reporting, safeguarding, and accounting, can make these groups appear higher risk.
- Fiscal hosting and pre-award support proved essential in enabling grant access and ensuring due diligence.
- The needs of youth-led climate justice organisations are often unmet due to funder discomfort with perceived risk.
Learning about ourselves
- Shared values among fund partners have helped to build trust and effective collaboration.
- The strength of our relationships has helped us navigate difficult decisions, though it may also make hard conversations less likely if we prioritise harmony over candour.
- Our approach to shared governance, such as flat decision-making regardless of contribution has been an asset, as it streamlined decision making and enabled us to fund young people quickly
- We benefitted from working iteratively, making decisions together as learning emerged.
- We learned that we each brought different skills to the table, including strategy, comms, and funding for youth-led organisations and assigned responsibilities to those skill-sets.
- As the fund grows, we must ensure that strong relationships do not limit our willingness to surface disagreement.
- We are beginning to understand what will and won’t translate to other funders; clarity in communication is key to replication.
Learning about our approach
- The rapid launch meant that some processes, especially decision-making, were tested for the first time during the application phase.
- The volume and quality of applications exceeded expectations, prompting learning about how to tighten criteria in future. Our current criteria did not adequately manage volume; further refinement, especially regarding youth leadership thresholds could be used to manage volume in future iterations.
- Outreach, while yielding a decent spread, was still regionally imbalanced, favouring the South of England.
- Better outreach in Northern regions will require more time and tailored relationship-building.
- We didn’t communicate the term “infrastructure” clearly enough, leading to confusion among applicants and partners.
- Clearer definitions and expectations are needed early in the process.
For any other queries, please contact Daniel@Blagravetrust.org.
