Did you know that 7/10 of Canadians agree with the demands of the youth-led climate movement?

Throughout history, youth have been at the frontlines of social movements and once again are leading the charge when it comes to tackling the climate crisis. Yet, sometimes it can be hard to find the right support to actually get the work done in a world of tedious paperwork and adult-centric mindsets. As a youth-led organization ourselves, we’ve been through these pain points too and believe that there are new ways to reimagine and redesign these systems.

At The Youth Harbour, we’re obsessed with getting you where you need to go to meaningfully move your mission. Whether you’re just getting started or you’re ready to take your idea to new heights, we’re here for you. The Harbour is a project of the Foundation for Environmental Stewardship. A youth-led, youth-serving registered charity (801430307 RR0001).

We are committed to provide meaningful support to accelerate meaningful action.

The Youth Harbour is a place of support, convening, and collaboration for the youth-climate movement.

We are committed to building climate-resilient communities by providing, flexible, long-term support to the youth-led climate movement in the form of financial, technical, and networking assistance.

THREE PILLARS OF SUPPORT


At The Youth Harbour, we focus on providing these specific types of support for youth:

Skills
support

We also know that you can’t just give money to an organization or project and expect everything to work out. That’s why at The Harbour we want to provide support to enhance your skills and capabilities and ensure that you can keep moving forward.

This means that we’re exploring ways to resource youth through professional services too, to ensure that they’re focused on the mission, not the burdensome administrative tasks. And if they want to learn about the burdensome administrative tasks, they can learn quickly on how to execute said tasks.

With youth at the centre, we engage with partners and allies in the sector to design pathways to uplift and amplify your work. If you have an idea about how to make your life easier, let us know.

Networking
Support

Since youth generally come into the climate sector without the network but are time-bound, often they are unable to make the connections at the speed that their work requires. To break these barriers, The Harbour is committed to making the connections that we can, bridging those with institutional knowledge to our young leaders, and offering spaces for conversation and collaboration.

We believe that we are stronger together when it comes to taking climate action.

Financial
Support

The funding opportunities for youth are often provided in insufficient amounts or require lengthy application processes. As a result, youth are often chasing and applying for funding that won’t fulfill their financial needs.

At The Harbour we aim to reduce the barriers to grant approval and funding opportunities. Our strategy is to use an accessible, youth-centered application model that provides core-capacity and/or multi-year grants that actually allow youth to make a meaningful impact.

You can find out more about each of these tiers here in our application page.

LEARN MORE

THE HARBOUR PRINCIPLES


The following are principles that FES staff, colleagues, and affiliates are expected to adhere to. When someone new enters the room, these principles are meant to guide discussions and outcomes.

Youth-led, youth-serving - always. We’re in a climate crisis, and we act like it.
We are at a nexus point where the actions that we take now greatly impact if we’re able to make it under the 1.5 degree mark. Climate change may not be the most important issue in every context, but it certainly is the most urgent, as failure to address the climate crisis heavily impacts our ability to address other inequalities and injustices. We seek to create, nurture, and maintain long-term supportive relationships and we are committed to collaborating with existing community partners and helping them amplify their impact.
Relationships of trust & mutual respect. Equity and accessibility. Responsibility & Reciprocity.
We believe that youth are the best agents of change and that’s why we are investing in them. Youth are powerful, passionate, and competent and the adult-centric world continuously underestimates and ignores the demands of youth. We are passionate about ensuring that youth are empowered and supported to take action and carry these experiences with them into their personal and professional lives. We seek to support innovative work that takes bold climate action and supports communities most deeply affected by the climate crisis. To do so, we are committed to making our processes as equitable and accessible as possible through clarity and transparency by demystifying climate jargon and language, providing consistent and clear communication within capacity, and ensuring we accommodate folks that may not be able-bodied, speak other languages than English, and experience barriers to climate work. We will review our strategies regularly to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the community we serve. We encourage work that brings underrepresented communities, particularly Indigenous communities, to the forefront of the climate movement and defends communities whose health and livelihoods are threatened by environmental exploitation. We are committed to align ourselves with the Calls to Action outlined by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

Download a pdf copy of our principles here:


THE HARBOUR PRINCIPLES
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Charitable Registration No. 801430307 RR0001