The Spark Fund is youth-led fund that invests in youth-led and youth-focused groups. We work closely with 56 community-based organizations – selected by young leaders – that are driving transformation change across the world by addressing social issues from climate change, mental health, LGBTQ+ rights to gender justice and more.
Placing key funding decisions in the hands of young people representing their communities.
Youth panelists design the application process and determine the grantmaking criteria to award funds to youth-led and youth-focused organizations. They use a multilingual digital platform to make decisions together.
Our Spark Fund partners receive flexible funding that enables them to experiment, collaborate, and learn. They also have access to capacity development support and the opportunity to build connections with each other across the globe.
Global Fund for Children launched the Spark Fund in 2021 as a pooled fund that brings together funders committed to supporting impactful youth-led participatory grantmaking. After a successful pilot round, we’ve expanded the fund to launch additional rounds focused on mental health and climate action, two issues the youth panelists identified as urgent priorities for young people. There is room for additional funders to join the Spark Fund and help launch new rounds focused on specific themes and/or geographies.
Global Youth-Led Change
The first Spark Fund round was led by four regional youth panels representing 15 countries in the Americas, Europe and Eurasia, South Asia, and Southern Africa. These youth panels awarded over $1.1 million to 56 youth-led and youth-focused organizations in 13 countries.
The youth panelists chose to support grassroots organizations in their communities that are working on a wide range of issues, including climate justice, gender equity, disability rights, LGBTQ+ rights, mental health, and education. Spark Fund partners are fighting to end period poverty in Lesotho; ensuring access to mental health services in Bangladesh; protecting Indigenous cultural identity in Mexico; and much more. No matter what issues they focus on, these grassroots organizations are achieving inspiring changes in their communities.
In Armenia, Frontline Youth Network supports peacebuilding work in the conflict-affected border regions. This youth-led organization has convinced the Armenian government to approve its peace education curriculum so that it can be taught in schools across the country.
In Mexico, Red de Intérpretes y Promotores Interculturales, a collective of young human rights defenders, seeks to guarantee justice for Indigenous communities. Speaking more than 64 Indigenous languages and dialects, members of the collective provide legal translation, accompaniment, and representation. The collective has been working tirelessly to advocate for inclusion within the justice system, including ensuring Indigenous people have access to interpreters and translators during trials.
In Namibia, the youth-led organization African Pathfinder Leaders Initiative (APLI) provides opportunities for young people to develop the skills, knowledge, and networks to achieve their goals and contribute to the development of their communities. Support from the Spark Fund has enabled APLI to continue its fellowship program, which is an incubator and leadership development program for young people.
In Pakistan, the youth- and women-led organization Rural Development Foundation (RDF) empowers women and girls to participate in climate change adaptation and resilience initiatives and policy discussions. When devastating flooding occurred in Pakistan in 2022, RDF also jumped into action to provide much-needed humanitarian support.
A panel of 15 young people aged 21 to 28 is leading the fund’s design and implementation. The panelists will select a cohort of ten to 15 youth-led initiatives addressing community-level climate resilience and adaptation and award them with grants ranging from $5,000 to $15,000.
Check out this blog by Dang Thanh Huong, a Southeast Asia Spark Fund panelist from Vietnam, about her learnings experiences with the Spark fund and the fund-design and decision-making process.
Youth leading on racial justice and mental health
The first US-based round of the Spark Fund is focused on the mental health and wellbeing of Black boys and young men in Atlanta, Georgia, and it will kick off in January 2024.
A panel of local Black youth leaders in Georgia will select 10 to 12 youth-led or youth-focused grassroots organizations, creating a cohort of organizations building healthier communities through advocacy, community-building, education, and more.
GFC is also seeking funding partners for Spark Fund rounds focused on the mental health and wellbeing of Black boys and young men in South Africa and the UK.
“We can’t talk about mental health without exploring the oppressive systems of gender, race, and class, since they don’t allow us to exercise our rights and reach opportunities for development,” said Mar, 25, from Voces Violeta, one of the Spark Fund pilot program partners in Peru.
Get involved
The Spark Fund continues to grow, its future direction shaped by feedback from inspirational young leaders around the world. We are seeking funders to expand the climate action work to West Africa and Latin America in 2024, and we plan to develop a new round that will seek to resource groups and individuals working to advance the rights of LGBTQ+ youth in Latin America.
If you are interested in learning more about the Spark Fund or would like to join an upcoming pooled round, please contact Christine Burkhart.
More than a process to provide funding, it was a window to give a hand to many youth organizations so that they could continue to fight hunger, the environmental crisis, and violence, among other issues in their communities. It was also an opportunity to learn about and make visible thousands of problems and how youth leadership is willing to confront them.
Flor Campos Rivas, Spark Fund panelist, Peru
Being a part of the Spark Fund, our growth as an NGO has skyrocketed in a number of ways, we have successfully officiated our NGO and programs. With the assistance of the flexible funding, we were able to participate in National Forums which we are now a huge part of the Technical Working Groups in Lesotho. We feel grateful for this spark as we have moved from the conceptual to developing stage.
Nthabiseng Mohanela, NomaPads Foundation, Lesotho
The Spark Fund gave us freedom and flexibility, and it truly helped us – when our team would suggest new ideas, we could say, “Yes!” We are now able to better structure our activities in terms of what we need.
