The Global Youth Climate Action Fund is an initiative being spearheaded by BLI Global and Drop Access. It is supported by Greening Kenya Initiative Trust, BLI Global Capital, African Youth Initiative on Climate Change, Education Communication Outreach Stakeholders, and YOUNGO. The initiative began as a webinar series to equip young people around the world with information on how to lobby for youth climate finance and carbon markets friendly policies. One of the outcomes of this series was the launch of a Global Youth Climate Action Fund, to help bridge the financing gap between youth-led climate action and financiers.

GYCAF is working to close the USD 100,000,000 pledge between 2021 and 2031. Since the fund will be open-ended, the goal is to encourage private sector donors to contribute towards fulfilling our pledging quotas and still be able to disburse funds as needed to grantees and investees on a rotational basis. Fundraising efforts for the fund include lobbying at UN Climate events, liaising with private donors, foundations, and grants, and approaching investment funds to co-finance term sheets.

We are currently fundraising for the grants based Readiness Program with a funding requirement of USD 100,000 and a survey is circulating online to aggregate and analyse the funding size requirements of young people around the world. We are also organizing the second season for the climate finance and carbon pricing webinar.

The Global Youth Climate Action Fund (GYCAF) aims to support youth climate action at the grass-root level. Through working with institutional mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund, UNEP-FI, and the GEF, the fund seeks to create a financing vehicle that will commit dedicated funds to youth-led projects and startups. Funds raised through the GYCAF will supplement additional resources set aside by national and local governments to help avert the effects of climate change in specifically developing countries.

The fund will look to foster intergenerational partnership between young people, other stakeholders, and respective governments. It is also looking to echo partnerships between developed and developing countries

Consists of two managing organizations, one from USA and one from Kenya also referred to as the Program Managers for the first phase of the project and Fund Managers for the second phase of the project.

In order to incorporate communities, the potential projects to be identified are categorized into urban and rural clusters with funding approval based on specific climate action themes; adaptation, mitigation, entrepreneurship, and innovation.