Climate Parent Fellowship

The Climate Parent Fellowship is a new program that aims to support, connect, and amplify climate parent organizers as they grow their creative ideas, campaigns, and projects and contribute to the emerging climate-parent movement.

Fellows receive training, mentorship, and a part-time stipend, which aims to make their climate organizing work more sustainable. The Fellowship also acts as a peer-to-peer learning network.

Our first Fellowship program runs from July 1, 2021–June 30, 2022. We aim to support more passionate and dedicated climate leaders in subsequent cohorts.

The Fellowship is a joint project between Our Kids Climate and Parents For Future Global.

Meet the Fellows

The Climate Parent Fellowship supports, amplifies, and connects parent-led, intergenerational, and family-centered climate organizing work.

Our first Fellowship cohort is composed of 12 women from 11 countries: Brazil, Canada, Ghana, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, South Africa, Vietnam, the UK, and the US.

The Fellowship will support these 12 talented climate leaders as they grow their creative ideas, campaigns, and projects and contribute to the growing climate-parent movement.

Alicia Hall, New Zealand
Alicia Hall, New Zealand
Alicia founded Parents for Climate Aotearoa in 2019 to empower parents across New Zealand to act on climate change. A strong advocate for climate justice, she is working to ensure local parent-led climate groups embed equity, social justice, and racial justice in their foundations. She is passionate about ensuring all children will have a livable climate.
Amuche Nnabueze, Nigeria
Amuche Nnabueze, Nigeria
Amuche has been using art to educate people about environmental concepts and sustainable lifestyles for over a decade. She is a member of Parents For Future Nigeria and is actively involved both in expanding the movement in Nigeria and as an organizer in Parents For Future Global. Amuche is also a lecturer at the University of Nigeria, where she teaches sculpture and cultural and creative arts.
Gargi Maitra, India
Gargi Maitra, India
Gargi is the outreach lead of the Bengal Clean Air Network, the co-founder of Kolkata Clean Air, and an active member of the Warrior Moms network. Gargi is passionate about her love of her city of Kolkata, about cycling, and about getting out into nature. Her early work on mother and child health in the rural districts of Bengal continues to inspire her work today.
Kamila Kadzidlowska, Poland
Kamila Kadzidlowska, Poland
Kamila is a documentary filmmaker and one of the central organizers in Rodzice dla Klimatu (Parents For Future Poland). She is developing a short film series called Fumes of the Black Gold, which features people whose lives are deeply affected by coal and the climate crisis. She is working closely with ex-miners, youth, and families on the film project, including those living in the shadow of the Bełchatów power plant.
Le Hoang Minh Nguyet, Vietnam
Le Hoang Minh Nguyet, Vietnam
Le Nguyet has inspired and has been inspired by her daughter, who is now a key voice for youth climate engagement in Vietnam. For the last three years, Nguyet has been establishing an active environmental family engagement program with support from local NGOs. Her work combines education and connection to nature, and she is looking forward to growing her program with support from the Fellowship.
Mariana Menezes, Brazil
Mariana Menezes, Brazil
Mariana is the co-founder of Familias pelo Clima in Brazil, an active climate-parent group that works closely with Fridays For Future Brazil. The group has had success with litigation and has delivered some eye-catching creative actions. The Fellowship will enable Mariana to strengthen Familias pelo Clima, engage new volunteers, and tell the stories of parent activism in Brazil.
Natalie Caine, Canada
Natalie Caine, Canada
In 2019, Natalie co-founded the community organization For Our Kids Montréal, which mobilizes and supports parents, grandparents, and their families to take collective action on the climate crisis. Bringing a background as a facilitator, organizer, and manager, Natalie strives to create welcoming and empowering spaces for activism and justice movements that are more accessible, effective, and sustainable for the long haul.
Patience Agyekum, Ghana
Patience Agyekum, Ghana
Patience leads policy-level advocacy at the Strategic Youth Network for Development (SYND), working to ensure that the voices of young people are heard and included in Ghana’s climate plans. As a Climate Parent Fellow, she will lead her team in the expansion of parent engagement and intergenerational work on climate change.
Sandra Freij, UK
Sandra Freij, UK
Sandra’s climate engagement began after she found herself and her family surrounded by bushfires in her home country of Sweden. Sandra supported the first youth climate strikes in the UK and has spent the last two years building Parents For Future UK. A photographer with a background in fashion and arts, she is passionate about telling the stories of parent climate activists in new and creative ways.
Thingreiphi Lungharwo, India
Thingreiphi Lungharwo, India
Thingreiphi is a leader from the Tangkhul community of the Naga people in remote Northeast India. She is passionate about raising the voices of indigenous women in decision-making spaces. Through the Fellowship, Thingreiphi aims to engage indigenous women to ensure that their concerns are included in state-wide climate action plans and build stronger connections between indigenous communities and the climate-parent movement.
Winona Bateman, US
Winona Bateman, US
Winona leads Families for a Livable Climate in Missoula, Montana. Her group is focused on bringing more families into the climate movement, reaching out across differences, and engaging in one-on-one conversations to build community will for climate action. With a background in communications, Winona sees climate art and storytelling as a regenerative practice, a way to make connections with each other and create meaning in our lives.
Xoli Fuyani, South Africa
Xoli Fuyani, South Africa
Xoli has been working with schools and intergenerational groups in South Africa on environmental awareness for over 10 years. She has worked in-depth with children from townships, inspiring them to live sustainability and supporting them to be climate activists. Through the Fellowship, she will expand and connect her work across generations, from youth to grandparents.

Learn More about the Fellowship

The Fellowship is currently closed for applications, but we hope to open it again soon.

The Climate-Parent Fellowship is intended to support people who are already working on parent-led, intergenerational, and/or family-focused climate engagement and organizing. We strongly encourage people to apply if they are already doing work in this area or if they have an idea for a new project that would contribute to the emerging climate-parent community.

Our ideal candidate would be an inspiring organizer, activist, or leader who is already engaged in developing new ideas or carrying out existing organizations and strategies, is highly collaborative, and does not have access to existing funding sources. We are interested in fellows engaging in a range of climate engagement and movement strategies: creative (storytelling, film, blog, podcast, book, social media, etc), schools campaigns, legal strategies, sustainable behavior, grassroots/community organizing, corporate focussed strategies, and others.

This is a global Fellowship. Candidates from all countries are eligible to apply. We particularly welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds.

This Fellowship is an opportunity for individuals, it is not open to group applications. More than one member of a single group is welcome to apply.

Yes, currently the Fellowship (monthly calls, retreat, mentorship) will be run in English; however, many fellows selected will not be native English speakers. The application process is also in English, but applications will be judged on the ideas and potential contribution to the community, not on the accuracy of spelling/grammar. We are exploring the possibly of offering the Fellowship in different languages.

No. Applicants must be over 18 years old but in addition to parent-led climate organizations, we will consider all applicants working on all intergenerational and family friendly climate organizing, although we expect a majority of Fellows selected will be parents or grandparents.

This Fellowship has been set up to strengthen parent-climate organizing and to increase the funding flowing into parent-climate groups with the aim of growing the whole community of parent-climate engagement. We won’t fund individuals who:

  • Are not focused on climate-parent organizing, intergenerational, and family-focused climate organizing.
  • Are already working for a well-funded organization or have access to major funds and resources. If your group or organization had 2 (or 3) full time employees working on parent-led climate engagement this Fellowship is probably not for you.
  • Are not currently working in partnership or collaboration with others at the local, national, and/or international levels.
  • Can’t commit time to developing their group, organization, project, or idea throughout the year, and to participate in the global cohort activities.

Selected Fellows will be awarded a part-time stipend to help carry out their work for this 12 month Fellowship program. This amount will vary depending on country, but will be equivalent to $20,000 USD for US and European Fellows. (Please note: The fellowship stipend is intended to fund part of the Fellow’s time and efforts during the one year period. It is not equivalent to a full-time salary.)

It is important to note that Fellows will be responsible for paying national taxation after they receive the funding and that for some Fellows receiving this stipend may affect, for example, benefits they are eligible for.

Fellows will have access to peer-to-peer learning, monthly training/discussion sessions, communications support, and a small amount of tailored 1:1 mentoring.

The Fellowship does not come with a job description – this is funding to support fellows to do their own work. The time requirement (other than to continue your climate engagement work) is minimal.

We expect Fellows to spend time further developing their existing idea/group/organization/project or working to launch their new project. Fellows will also be expected to actively participate in monthly online training sessions, the Fellowship retreat, and mentorship opportunities.

This is a pilot 1-year Fellowship but we hope to make this into a longer-term Fellowship program; the Fellows selected in 2021 will be asked to provide feedback to help shape the ongoing program. This will involve completing 3 questionnaires at the beginning, middle, and end of the program and staying in touch with the Fellowship team at key stages.

The Fellowship program is currently closed for applications. We hope to recruit new cohorts of Fellows in due course. Please keep you eye on this page. If you have questions about the Fellowship, please email parentclimatefellowship@gmail.com

The Fellowship is closed for applications. However, this was the case with previous applications. Indeed, the last application required applicants to provide contact details for 2 references from within the climate-parent or broader climate movement. We are looking for collaborative people and therefore it is highly likely that some people will be both applicants and also references.

The Fellowship is closed for applications. However, the application process for the first cohort was as follows.

Applications were assessed by the Fellowship team and by a five-person Selection Committee comprising key members of Parents For Future Global and Our Kids’ Climate from the Fellowship team and diverse external committee members with expertise on climate engagement and fellowship programmes.

In cases where selection committee members were already working closely with an applicant, the Selection Committee member(s) recused themselves from decision making.

We are seeking to raise more funding to increase the amount of training and mentorship available to the first cohort of Fellows and to make this an ongoing Fellowship programme. We would welcome any fundraising input.

We will be looking for skilled and experienced mentors to offer support to the Fellows. If you have relevant experience and might be interested in supporting one or more of the Fellows as a mentor, we’d love to hear from you.

Please contact parentclimatefellowship@gmail.com if you can help.

We are grateful to our incredibly supportive funders who have offered direct support for this Fellowship project – Equation Campaign, UMI Fund and NorthLight Foundation. Without their support this Fellowship would not be possible and we have appreciated their feedback, encouragement and partnership on getting this Fellowship to launch. We also want to thank KR Foundation for their ongoing support to build the climate-parent community.