Growing Roots Grant 2026 (Closed): Up to $10,000 for Youth-Led Climate Justice

Growing Roots Grant 2026 (Closed): Up to $10,000 for Youth-Led Climate Justice

The Growing Roots Grant 2026 was a Roots micro-grant for youth-led climate justice work. The official Roots program page now says that applications are closed, so this page is a historical reference to the completed cycle rather than an invitation to apply. The recorded closing date was February 28, 2026. Roots’ page does not announce a new round or a replacement deadline, so readers should not treat this entry as a live listing.

The program was designed for small, grassroots collectives working with communities affected by climate change. Roots described the award as up to $10,000 USD per initiative, with the possibility that a selected group would receive less than it requested. Funding was paired with ongoing mentorship, coaching, capacity-building opportunities, and communications support. The purpose was not to fund a polished organization’s general operations. It was to help a young collective develop a new or emerging project that could strengthen community power.

Verified details from the closed cycle

The form link is retained because it is the cycle’s application route, but it is no longer an open submission channel. Roots’ own program page is the better source for checking whether a future Growing Roots call is announced.

What the grant was intended to support

Roots grouped eligible work into three related areas. The categories were broad enough to include different forms of organizing, but they were not a blank cheque for any project described as environmental.

Strategic dialogue and narrative building

This category covered work that creates shared understanding in divided or polarized settings. Examples from the program description include spaces for dialogue, efforts to counter misinformation or disinformation, relationship-building within communities, and bridges between residents, authorities, institutions, or coalitions. A strong project in this area would explain what disagreement or harmful narrative it is addressing, who needs to be in the conversation, and how the work can support organizing beyond a single event.

The emphasis was on relationships and power, not simply producing content. A youth collective might have proposed facilitated conversations across a local divide, a community storytelling process that gives residents more control over how climate impacts are represented, or a way to connect groups that rarely plan together. The proposal still needed a clear community purpose and a route beyond the applicants’ existing circle.

Advocacy-oriented initiatives

This category was for projects seeking to influence a concrete public policy, law, budget, or local decision. Roots specifically included advocacy, research, and civic engagement that could contribute to changes in municipal or other public policy. Applicants therefore needed to identify the decision they wanted to influence, the people or institutions with authority over it, and the community relationships that would make the advocacy credible.

The grant was not limited to national campaigns. A carefully scoped effort around a local planning rule, a public service, a climate-risk response, or a municipal budget could fit if it showed a systemic purpose and a realistic path to public change. A proposal focused only on attending a high-profile meeting, building an individual profile, or mobilizing without a strategy was outside the stated priorities.

Community autonomy initiatives

The third area covered infrastructure, systems, or resources owned and managed by the community itself. The central question was who would control the asset or process after the grant-supported work began. A project could involve a community-managed resource, a locally governed resilience system, or another structure that strengthens durable decision-making power. The application needed to explain governance, participation, maintenance, and how the work would remain connected to local needs.

Across all three areas, Roots was looking for projects that could grow into durable, autonomous organizing. That does not mean an applicant needed to promise rapid scale. It does mean the proposal had to show how the work would reach people outside an existing echo chamber and how the group would build sustainable power rather than only deliver a short campaign.

Who could apply

The target applicants were grassroots, youth-led initiatives from the Global South. Roots listed the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The program also welcomed applications from diaspora and BIPOC communities located in Global North countries.

Roots defined youth and youth-led in practical terms: it supported initiatives from people between 18 and 35, and the majority of the group’s membership was expected to fall within that range, including the people responsible for decisions. The program did not require a group to be a registered nonprofit or other legal entity. Unregistered groups could apply. For-profit groups and business ventures were excluded, however, so an applicant needed to present a collective climate-justice initiative rather than a commercial pitch.

An individual could not apply for a project carried out alone. Roots said that applicants did not need to belong to a pre-existing organization, but the project had to be carried out by a collective of more than one person. Previous recipients of the Roots Micro-grants program could apply with a new or emerging project, provided that the proposal met the current criteria.

The project itself had to be new or emerging and no older than one year. Roots also said that a group could propose starting something new, as long as the idea showed potential to develop into durable, autonomous organizing within a one-year timeframe. Applicants should therefore have been precise about what already existed, what the grant would start, and what evidence showed that the work was rooted in a real community rather than being an abstract concept.

What the application required

The 2026 application was submitted through the Google Form linked above. Roots’ application package described four main groups of information. Applicants needed to prepare these before opening the form, especially because Roots warned that the form could experience problems when many people accessed it close to the deadline.

First, the form requested information about the applicant and group: names, region, contact details, the name of the organization or collective if there was one, the group’s age range, and the kind of work it did. The absence of formal registration did not remove the need for a clear account of who was involved and who made decisions.

Second, the proposal section asked what the project was about, what the group wanted to achieve, who would benefit, and what relationship the applicants had with the community of focus. It also asked about foreseeable challenges and how the group planned to address them. A useful response would connect the climate pressure to the community’s daily reality, define a manageable change, and explain why the proposed collective was positioned to do the work.

Third, applicants had to submit an estimated budget and timeline. Roots listed equipment, transportation, professional services, research or training, campaign efforts, and project implementation among the types of expenses the grant could cover. The budget should have matched the proposed activities and the group’s actual capacity. Because the maximum was a ceiling rather than a guaranteed award, requesting less than $10,000 was acceptable when that was the honest cost of the work.

Fourth, a video submission was required. Roots wanted applicants to speak about themselves, their path into activism, what they cared about, what inspired the proposal, what made it meaningful, and why it mattered to the community. Professional production was not required: Roots said a mobile phone or any available device was acceptable. Applicants who did not want to appear on camera could record without showing their face, and Roots stated that the video would remain private.

Applications could be submitted in English or Spanish. If an applicant could not access the online form, Roots invited them to contact [email protected] to discuss an alternative. An email proposal was not considered automatically; Roots said it would only be accepted if an alternative had been agreed in advance.

Support beyond the grant

The money was only one part of the package. Roots said that selected initiatives would receive one or two coaches, assigned according to the project’s needs, from inception through implementation. The coaching could cover tactics, communications, public outputs, lobbying, networking, and outreach. Roots also described a six-month reporting cycle and expected selected groups to share evidence of progress at key milestones six months and twelve months after implementation began.

Recipients were also to have access to Roots training and workshops in organizing, creative storytelling, resilience and wellbeing, and countering disinformation, as well as related communities of practice. Roots offered media and social-media support through stories, videos, posts, and possible local-media assistance. These services matter when assessing the grant: the opportunity was structured as a combination of modest funding and sustained accompaniment, not merely a one-time cash transfer.

How to use this archive entry

The deadline in the front matter is the completed cycle’s real closing date, not a future application date. historicalReference = true keeps the page useful as an archive record while preventing the expired call from being presented as open. There is no confirmed successor cycle in the official Roots material checked for this update, so this page does not invent a future deadline or convert the program to rolling status.

If Roots announces another Growing Roots round, compare the new announcement with this record instead of assuming that the same eligibility rules, amount, questions, or support package will carry over. In particular, verify the age definition, eligible regions, project-age limit, collective requirement, application language, video requirement, award ceiling, and deadline on the new official page. For the closed cycle documented here, Roots’ official program page and the archived form are the authoritative links.