Futures Lab Kicks off with the Climate Patch Series

Futures Lab, a flagship program of the Youth Climate Collective launches the  Climate Patch Series, an interactive participatory workshop that is designed to tackle systemic barriers to youth innovation in the climate space. The program will bring together key themes that highlight the structural dynamics shaping how issues are prioritized and how financial resources are distributed, particularly in relation to youth-led initiatives. Through the Climate Patch Series, we showcase the interconnected nature of social and economic sectors and their overlap with youth priorities. Building on the insights and ideas generated during the sessions, we will develop practical guides and toolkits designed to strengthen how youth-led initiatives engage with and navigate these complex systems.

The Climate Patch Series functions as a strategic 'patch' for our climate action ecosystem, identifying and fixing flaws in our institutional systems. Each session brings together innovators and campaigners and expert insiders to co-design practical solutions for a specific bottleneck. 

Why Climate Patch I Focuses on the Financing Landscape for Youth Innovation

Climate Patch I addresses a pressing paradox: while young people are at the forefront of developing locally grounded climate solutions, they are consistently locked out of the financing needed to scale their impact. The current landscape favors large-scale infrastructure, demanding maturity and collateral that youth-led initiatives simply don’t have. The result is a vast underutilization of Africa’s most dynamic source of innovation - its human capital.

The two-part session will convene thought leaders and innovators, to generate actionable ideas that carve out new pathways for systemic change, guided by the themes that center discussions around re-designing youth tailored financial instruments by examining options of micro-grants and blended finance to see how that works, and in enabling an environment that cherishes youth-led innovation, exploring how we can develop mechanism that reduces ‘first-loss capital’ for sustainable businesses.

A Tangible Outcome for Change

 The Climate Patch Series goes beyond interactive dialogue, aiming to create lasting impact by capturing and embedding the insights and strategies emerging from its platform. To ensure these outcomes translate into action, we will develop and launch practical knowledge tools and guidelines tailored for youth campaigners and movement builders. These resources will complement the key discussions and outputs from our participatory sessions, while also helping to bridge critical resource and knowledge gaps within the youth climate landscape.  The Climate Patch Series represents a commitment to moving the needle where it counts. By starting with the critical issue of youth finance, we are patching a fundamental flaw in the system and empowering the next generation of climate leaders to build a resilient future for all.