WHO WE ARE

WE STARTED BY PLANTING A 3-METER TREE INSIDE THE BLUE ZONE OF COP27. WE'RE STILL PLANTING THINGS THE SYSTEM SAID WE COULDN'T.

What we do

The Global Youth Coalition is a youth-led network that shows up where decisions are made — UN climate negotiations, financing-for-development tables, biodiversity and ocean conferences — and brings the people most affected by those decisions into the room. We train delegations, fund projects, run research, and build tools so young leaders don't just attend the future. They write it.

How we work

We don't do panels for the sake of panels. Every program ends in a deliverable: a delegation at a COP, a published policy brief, a tree in the ground, a bursary in someone's bank account, a translated report in their language. Our members are scientists, organizers, lawyers, farmers, coders, and artists from 178 countries — and we move at the speed of the crisis, not the speed of the institutions.

What we've moved so far

$350K+ invested into youth-led projects. 5,000 climate solutions mapped through our networks. 100,000+ views of our free training programmes with partners including the University of Oxford's Net Zero Initiative. Reports translated by volunteers into 6+ languages so the work reaches further than English.

Two young speakers at a press conference at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn

Group photo of young people in Kenya Youth in Forestry T-shirts, captioned 'DUAPA @ AYCA'

Six young panellists face an audience at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn

OUR STORY, BY ROOM

COP27

An impossible tree, in the Blue Zone

Sharm El-Sheikh, 2022. A handful of young organizers walked a 3-meter Tree of Hope into the most restricted negotiating space on Earth. No budget, no permission, no precedent. That tree is the reason GYC exists — and the reason we still believe nothing about this system is fixed.

Road to COP28 & COP29

Training a generation in climate finance

Two years on the road, one curriculum: in collaboration with the YOUNGO Climate Finance Academy we trained young negotiators in the language money speaks — loss & damage, the new collective quantified goal, MDB reform — alongside our broader programs with the University of Oxford's Net Zero Initiative that reached 100,000+ views worldwide.

COP29

First GYCT delegation, Baku

Baku, 2024. Our first Global Youth Climate Training (GYCT) delegation walked into a COP whose entire fight was finance. Trained, accredited, and prepared to read the text — not just react to it.

2025 — The Finance Year

Following the money — D.C., Davos, Sevilla

If 2024 was the diagnosis, 2025 was the chase. CIF Trust meetings in Washington D.C., collaboration caravans through the Alps to Davos, and our FfD4 side event in Sevilla on intergenerational fairness in financing for development. Wherever the money moved, we moved with it — with a youth seat and a written brief.

UNOC 2025

Ocean diplomacy, Nice

The UN Ocean Conference put the blue half of the planet back on the table. We brought youth voices into the negotiations in Nice — pushing on marine protection, the High Seas Treaty, and the rights of coastal and small-island communities who carry the ocean crisis first.

COP30

Second GYCT delegation, Belém

Belém, 2025. The COP that was always supposed to happen — in the Amazon, on the frontline. Our second GYCT delegation arrived with £3,000 bursaries, we ran Reeforesting 4 Peace in the field, and tied every action back to the communities defending the forest long before any of us showed up.

January–September 2026

From Davos to Singapore

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, we built the relationships that shaped our year, including with Prashanth Shanmugan of the Australian Council on Foreign Relations, who went on to open GYCT 2026. In September we joined Impact Week in Singapore, hosted by Tsao Pao Chee, connecting GYC with Asia's impact and philanthropy community. Both rooms pointed the same way: youth talent belongs where policy meets business.

2026 — The Year of the Sky

From policy to practice

Four COPs at the negotiating tables taught us that policies only matter when they turn into work. This year we built the structure to act on it: leadership passed to our new Chair, Merna A. Elboghdady, and our Champs now run a Skills Pipeline in clean energy and green jobs, governance and negotiation, and nature-based solutions with responsible AI. We launched Hack for the Futures at London Climate Action Week, ran GYCT with Oxford Net Zero and the Youth Negotiators Academy, published our first foresight findings from 1,000+ young people in 140+ countries, and started calling on companies and governments to open blue-green jobs to the people we train. In November, we open the Youth House at COP31 in Antalya. If you want in, the door is open.