Youth Adaptation Forum

About this project

The YAF brought together two complementary components: the Climate Adaptation Action Day Small Grants Initiative, which supported localized youth-led adaptation activities, and the Youth Adaptation Forum, which provided a platform for dialogue, collaboration and policy engagement.

1. Climate Adaptation Action Day Small Grants Initiative

The Climate Adaptation Action Day Small Grants Initiative supported youth-led organizations across Africa to implement localized activities that strengthened awareness and action on climate adaptation at the community level.

Through coordinated regional support, the initiative enabled youth networks to highlight context-specific adaptation challenges and solutions while strengthening engagement and collaboration across countries. A total of EUR 1,000 was allocated to ten youth organizations in Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, South Sudan, Sudan, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Madagascar and Guinea-Bissau.

The initiative supported simultaneous youth-led activities that increased attention to climate adaptation within national and regional climate discussions and created opportunities for young people to connect local adaptation priorities with broader climate processes.

2. Youth Adaptation Forum

The Youth Adaptation Forum (YAF) was a multi-stakeholder convening platform implemented by The Youth Print for the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), in collaboration with Addis Ababa University (AAU) and the Ministry of Planning and Development (MoPD).

Convened in the context of the African Climate Summit (ACS-2), the Forum brought together young leaders, government representatives, academics, civil society organizations, private sector actors and international partners to strengthen collaboration on climate adaptation and youth participation in decision-making.

The Forum provided a structured space for dialogue, knowledge exchange and the development of actionable adaptation priorities. It resulted in the endorsement of the Youth Adaptation Communiqué, a collective statement outlining youth priorities, recommendations and calls for action to advance climate adaptation at national and continental levels.