Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Alliances Fund/Empowering youth people to improve climate finance transparency and accountability.

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statusNot funded
Empowering youth people to improve climate finance transparency and accountability.
The main goal is to explore how the experience of Wikimedia can strengthen the capacities of youth representatives from Latin America to recognize the relevance of finance in climate. The empowerment of youth representatives aims to be a long-lasting effort through a fellowship program, allowing them to access both the knowledge of climate finance through GFLAC´s Youth Program.
start date2023-01-16
end date2023-07-17
budget (local currency)401909.79 MXN
budget (USD)20000 USD
grant typeMission-aligned organization
organization typeNon profit organisation
funding regionLAC
decision fiscal year2022-23
funding program roundRound 1
applicant(s)• N/A
organization (if applicable)• GFLAC-Grupo de Cambio Climático Para Latinoamerica Y El Caribe

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Applicant information[edit]

A. Organization type

Mission-aligned organization

B. Organization name

GFLAC-Grupo de Cambio Climático Para Latinoamerica Y El Caribe

E. Do you have an account on a Wikimedia project?

No

E1. Please provide the main Wikimedia Username (required) and Usernames of people related to this proposal.

N/A

G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?

Did not apply previously

H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?

Yes
H1. Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?
Bulb Foundation, EU LAC Foundation, European Climate Foundation, among others.
H2. Please state the size of these grants from the following options.
Between 5,000-50,000 USD
H3. What type of organization (s) did you receive grants from?
International NGO, Bilateral or Multilateral Organizations
H4. What percentage of your program budget do other funders contribute to?
More than 75%

1. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

No

1a. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

2. Are you legally registered?

Yes

3. What type of organization are you?

Non profit organisation

4. What is your organization or group's mission and how does it align with the Wikimedia movement?

Our mission is to contribute with the transformation of the financial systems to tackle the climate crisis. Through the campaign Sustainable Finance for Future, GFLAC promotes the generation and dissemination of data about climate change, and climate finance to influence decisions that can support the reduction of emissions and the increase of climate resilience. Our goal as well as Wikimedia´s is to improve the access to data to empower people.

5. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)

Website: https://www.gflac.org/inicio

Sustainable Finance for Future Campaign: https://www.sustainablefinance4future.org/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gflac-grupo-de-financiamiento-climatico/

Facebook: @GFLAC

Twitter: @GrupoGFLAC

Instagram: @gflac.financiamiento

Grant proposal[edit]

6. Please state the title of your proposal.

Empowering youth people to improve climate finance transparency and accountability.

9. Where will this proposal be implemented?

Mexico

10. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries?

Regional

10a. If you have answered international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the world's most vulnerable regions to climate change's negative impacts. Tackling climate change requires significant political, regulatory and budgetary transformation. However, based on GFLAC's research, most Latin American countries still face different constraints in combating climate change.

10b. Are there any specific sub-regions or areas where your proposal will be implemented?

This proposal aims to have a particular focus on Central America because it is a region that has not received sufficient support to understand the importance of climate finance.

11. What is the challenge or problem you are addressing and why is this important?

Climate change is a threat to all forms of life on the planet. One of the main problems is related to the investments that countries are doing around the world, which are still highly related to fossil fuels that are causing the problem. The scientific community agrees that it is necessary to diversify the investments to start increasing the finance in actions that will help reducing emissions and vulnerability. It is not clear how much money is needed, but some estimations talk about USD 589 billion per year and 780 billion per year (UNFCCC, 2021; Aviva Investors, 2022). However there is lack of information to improve the understanding about the status of climate finance in the world , and particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In this context, this proposal aims to support the generation, revision, and dissemination of information about climate finance, to understand better what are the financial flows that exist, what are the needs, as well as what are the gaps that need to be covered to implement climate action in Latin America and the Caribbean. The proposal is to build a collaborative space between GFLAC experts on climate finance and Wikimedia experts on open data, to identify information gaps about climate change and climate finance in the spanish portal of Wikimedia, to fill these gaps.

To achieve so, one of the most important agenda items of GFLAC has been building capacities to track, understand and disseminate information around climate finance. The result of these efforts is the Youth Program on Sustainable Finance, which is a program that aims to educate youth representatives about climate finance matters at the international, regional and national levels. The first program had 500 students, selected from 3200 applicants, and the second edition had 500 students who are now part of a community of sustainable finance hubs created in 15 countries of the region. We want to boost connections between specific communities, using this program to generate the exchange between GFLAC and Wikimedia.

12. What is the main objective of your proposal? Please state why you think partnering with Wikimedia Movement helps to achieve this objective?

The main goal is to explore how the experience of Wikimedia can strengthen the capacities of youth representatives from Latin America to recognize the relevance of finance in climate. The empowerment of youth representatives aims to be a long-lasting effort through a fellowship program, allowing them to access both the knowledge of climate finance through GFLAC´s Youth Program.

13. Describe your main strategies to achieve this objective?

The Sustainable Finance for the Future (S4F) campaign has three main areas of work: the Sustainable Finance Index (SFI), which is the tool that helps us to generate data; the Sustainable Finance Hub (SFH), where we develop strategies and programs to build capacities around sustainable finance, such as the Youth Program on Sustainable Finance; and the Sustainable Finance Dialogues, which is where we develop events such as the Sustainable Finance Week in LAC to generate multi-stakeholders dialogues.

The aim is to use the platforms that we have been developing to implement this proposal, which will focus on three areas, linked to capacity building elements:

1. Strengthen capacities of 20 actual members of the Wikimedia community to be part of the Youth Program on Sustainable Finance 2023.

a) In collaboration with Wikimedistas de Uruguay, GFLAC will design a section of the Youth Program about the generation and dissemination of open knowledge. b)Interviews with wikimedia experts to build capacities to close the data gaps that exist in the wikimedia in spanish about climate change and particularly, climate finance.

2. Forming potential members of the Wikimedia community, while supporting a group of 10 youth representatives from Central America to become open knowledge leaders

Through the fellowships, ten selected and outstanding students will work with experts to update information about climate finance and identify knowledge gaps in Spanish Wikipedia.

3.Disseminating information about the importance of open knowledge and climate finance in the context of the Sustainable Finance Week in 2023.

Design at least two public sessions, 1 workshop and 1 expert panel to address the relevance of transparency and what was learned during the process.

14. Are you running any in-person events or activities?

No

15. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified content knowledge gaps?

Age (regency) , Geography, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context)

16. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or thematic focus.

Education, Advocacy, Human Rights, Climate Change and sustainability, Public Policy

17. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select all categories that apply.

Geographic , Age

18. Please tell us more about your target participants.

Our target participants are youth representatives between 18 and 35 years old who will be part of the Program for Youth for Sustainable Finance 2023, mainly from Central American countries. The aim is also to collaborate with Wikimedia colleagues in these countries. We want to generate synergies between the youth representatives and Wikimedia to strengthen their capacities and knowledge related to climate finance. The aim is to identify a win-win scenario where GFLAC can continue pursuing the goal of empowering youth representatives, while supporting Wikimedia to improve their information about climate finance, by connecting both communities.

As a reference, the first Youth Program had 500 participants, selected from 3,200 applications. In the second year, we had 500 participants from 624 applications. The group had around 65% of women, 33% of men and 2% of other gender identities; likewise, there was a variety of age ranges. The group had people from 17 countries, mainly Mexico, with active participation from Honduras, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and El Salvador. Based on the Program there were 15 hubs on sustainable finance created, this to continue the collaboration among the Program members and in partnership with GFLAC. This proposal aims to support those long-lasting efforts, supporting youth representatives within and beyond the Program.

19. Do you have plans to work with other Wikimedia communities, groups or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?

Yes

19a. If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.

GFLAC has collaborated with Wikimedia, in different scenarios. One was participating in the event about Climate Change, Access to Information and Open Knowledge in Latin America: Challenges and Future Prospects” in Latin America, where Sandra Guzman, Founder of GFLAC talked about the importance of improving information to tackle climate change more effectively. There was identified an area of interest between GFLAC and Wikimedia that now is strengthened through this proposal. For this reason, this proposal has been designed in collaboration with Wikimedistas de Uruguay, which has a member that was part of the second Program of Youth for Sustainable Finance, and with the assistance of Brisa Ceccon, Sr. Partnerships Manager, LATAM, Wikimedia Foundation. Recently, during the Sustainable Finance Week, we launched a workshop with Wikimedistas-Uruguay, about the Wikipedia editing process.

19b. If no, please tell us the reasons why it has not been possible to make these connections.

N/A

20. Will you be working with other external non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?

Yes

20a. If yes, please describe these partnerships.

GFLAC has a network with more than 250 members from 17 countries. Furthermore, for 10 years, it has been creating more alliances through the S4F campaign. For the implementation of this project, GFLAC will collaborate with partners such as FLACSO Argentina, the academic partner, to design and implement the Youth Program for Sustainable Finance. At the same time, GFLAC will collaborate with the 12 organizations (such as undación Avina, Iniciativa Climática de México (ICM), Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental (CEMDA), Argentina 1.5) and more than 40 allies that are part of the Sustainable Finance Week in LAC. Most importantly, GFLAC will collaborate with the 15 Hubs of Youth representatives that are part of the network.

20a. If yes, indicate sharing of resources from these partners (in kind support, grants, donations, payments).

In the Youth Program context, partners' primary support is their time as experts since they share their knowledge with the participants through the sessions. In the context of the Sustainable Finance Week, partners also support the dissemination of information, organization of panels, provision of information, and participation as panelists, among others. The aim is to engage the Hubs in the process of exchanging experiences and lessons learned so far. The Hubs are also critical stakeholders in disseminating information about the events that we organize.

21. Please tell us how your organization is structured.

GFLAC operates through a core team of 8 permanent members. Every year GFLAC also has between 6-10 interns from the Youth Program and members of the Hubs. In governance, GFLAC has a board of 25 climate experts, mainly women from Latin America, which play as counselors in all our decision-making processes.

22. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

This proposal's strategic and directive leaders are Sandra Guzmán (Founder) and Diana Cárdenas (General Coordinator). The project's operation and implementation will also be coordinated by Laura Nava (Operations and Strategic Alliances Coordinator), Federika Logwinczuk (Strategic Communication Coordinator), and Jhon Cortes (Designer), who are in the communications team. At the same time, the project will include Orlando Barbosa (Research Coordinator), Victoria Trinidad (Researcher), Vania Montalvo (Researcher) and Lavinia Mezzei (Researcher), who are in the research team.

Our team includes financial, business and specific technical profiles. We also tend to have outstanding participants of the Youth Program to keep training them with specific projects as interns. This year we introduced Mariana Velázquez, Francisco Álvarez, Karen Álvarez (all from Mexico), Angel Carrasquillo (Puerto Rico, based on Argentina) and Myriam Puente, Katty González (both from Ecuador) to do research internships. In the coming months, we aim to increase our team capacity for supporting next year's activities by hiring a team member to coordinate the Hub-Community activities.

23. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.  

Yes

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation[edit]

24. What do you hope to learn from this proposal?

As our main goal is to work on long-lasting interventions to transform the financial system to tackle climate change, we want to promote open knowledge to spread climate awareness. Empowering youth representatives is an excellent way to build capacities and prepare them to confidently enter a complex and technical space. In this sense, this proposal will be part of the efforts that, as GFLAC, we are building to continue empowering youth representatives through alliances such as with Wikimedia.

We also want to learn to what extent, by creating these alliances, we can sustain our efforts in the future and what is needed to build enough capacities for the participants of the Program. For instance. We want to learn if by getting technical skills about content writing, youth can develop relevant information to activate their communities in order to help people to demand accountability from their governments and potentially even the private sector.reaching new audiences and putting information access at the center. We are developing this proposal based on previous experiences, but we will continue learning to improve these efforts in the coming years. For instance, we will implement an impact assessment with quantitative and qualitative indicators to see if we comply with the goals and to understand the areas that can improve in future collaborations.

Core Metrics[edit]

25. Enter a description of the metric and a number in the target field. If the metric does not apply to you, enter N/A for not applicable.

  • Number of participants from the Youth Program on Sustainable Finance attending Wikimedia´s Workshop (50)
  • Number of editors who decide cover climate finance and climate change matter as a response to the Youth Program
  • Number of planners of the material / contents (2)
  • Number of speakers during the Youth Program (15)
  • Number of facilitators for the open knowledge workshops (3)
Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target
Number of participants
70
Number of editors
5
Number of organizers
25
  • Improving of existing articles (2)
  • Identification of potential new content to complete climate finance material (6)
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target
Wikipedia
10
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A

25a. If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation. (optional)

N/A

26. What other information will you be collecting to learn about the impact of your work? (optional)

First, we can gather the numbers of people applying to the Youth Program and actively follow the course. In each midterm evaluation, we will collect information and feedback from the program and fellowship participants to reinforce elements for future actions through surveys. In order to promote community building, we will keep active during the program, maintaining an open space for virtually exchanging (through slack) and promoting presentations of the participants and their interests or work at the end of each course session. After the Youth Program, with the selected fellows we will keep active community calls, and people we speak with during the needs assessment interviews in order to learn what worked and what didn’t and improve upon their feedback.

27. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?

We will deliver a list of participants during all sessions from the Program, two midterm evaluations and a final team project to maintain an active network. For growth and audience retention, we will keep communicating about the milestones and ally participation in the course during the Program.

28. How do you hope to share these results so that others can learn from them?

Create a video of our experience, Create a training workshop to show others what we learned, Share results on social media, Participate in one on one peer sharing session with other grantees, Develop learning material for other users

Financial Proposal[edit]

29. What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency.

401909.79 MXN

30. What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

20000 USD

31. & 32. Please provide a budget for the amount of funding requested.

Access to budget and specification of financial needs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wk6x1EDqbzcFT9krs_oyQ3v_79xhyesN/edit#gid=577616248

33. What do you do to make sure there is a good management of funds?

The Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean is a regional initiative that brings together civil society organizations and academic institutions that work to promote transparency, accountability and the inclusion of human rights, gender equality, and sustainability criteria for the construction of a financial architecture that effectively addresses climate change in the region.

The GFLAC was born in 2008 in Mexico and was consolidated in 2012 at the regional level in the context of the COP18 in Doha, Qatar. The Group seeks through research, dissemination of information and capacity building, to develop and strengthen individuals, organizations and governments capacities related to climate finance. After nine years of existence, the GFLAC is considered a key player in climate finance issues at global, regional, and national level in various countries.

34. How will you contribute towards creating a supportive environment for participants using the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy?

We will run all the activities guided by Wikimedia’s Friendly Space Policy and the UCOC, we will spell it out or display it frequently when starting activies. We will have a point of contact that knows how the policy works and can handle problematic situations to provide help to any person that might feel they are in an uncomfortable or potentially harmful situation. We will maintain a space to exchange experiences at the end of every activity.

35. Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.

Other public document(s): A) Información del PJFS 2022

https://www.sustainablefinance4future.org/programa-de-jovenes-2022

B) Reporte IFS 2021 https://www.sustainablefinance4future.org/_files/ugd/32948d_020d7f297f1d47adad5c7548f60ff0de.pdf

C) Semana de Financiamiento Climático 2021 https://www.sustainablefinance4future.org/projects-6

D) Informe Semana de Financiamiento Climático 2021 https://www.sustainablefinance4future.org/_files/ugd/32948d_99aaa389a3d2439ca40f8d373d268eac.pdf

Final message[edit]

By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

36. We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Feedback[edit]