At The Iris Project, our overarching goal is to build a global community of motivated, confident, and resilient young leaders who protect and restore nature, and to influence philanthropy and policy so that youth-led solutions are taken seriously and properly supported.
I’m writing about confidence and resilience because, in this work, they aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re what enable young leaders to stay in it long enough for their work to grow.
Young people are doing environmental work with or without financial support. But most don’t have flexible, trust-based funding, mentoring, or the kind of networks that make things easier when it gets hard. And it does get hard.
After four years working alongside 28 early-stage youth-led projects and almost 20 youth advisors (each running their own initiatives), one thing is clear: it’s not a linear journey from A to B. It’s messy. It’s unpredictable. And often the work carries real personal risk for the young people leading it.
It can look like restoring mangroves to protect communities from flooding, while being pressured or threatened by people with more power – corporations, local authorities, and landowners. It can look like doing climate work in places where activism isn’t safe or is restricted, and finding ways to keep going without putting yourself in danger. It can look like cleaning wetlands and handling polluted waterways and dangerous waste, just so a lake can support wildlife again.
So when I say “confidence and resilience”, I don’t mean being upbeat. I mean staying in the work when the reality of it is challenging, and being able to be transparent about what’s not working, not just celebrating the wins.
For us, supporting confidence and resilience goes beyond giving an unrestricted grant (important as that is). It means backing leaders in the parts of the work that funders often ignore. Shifting power isn’t just about who receives funding. It’s about who feels able to make decisions, take risks, set direction and recover from setbacks without constantly seeking permission.
For example:
- 1:1 risk and security support, led by experts at @Open Briefing, without making young leaders write it into a budget line or justify it as a “project cost”.
- Spaces to ask awkward questions, including questions they’ve never felt safe asking before – about risk, backlash, safety, money, boundaries, or what to do when things go wrong.
- Support that doesn’t end after a year, so leaders aren’t forced into constant “start again” mode.
- Helping them build towards fundraising beyond us, when they’re ready – not expecting that overnight.
This is why we’ve built risk and security support into how we work, rather than treating it as optional. It also means being realistic about what youth leadership looks like over time. Too often, philanthropy funds outputs and underestimates what it takes for a young person to keep leading under pressure. Confidence and resilience are built through experience, support and being trusted when things don’t go perfectly.
I don’t think we talk enough about how much courage this work requires from young people. It’s also why we’re about to launch a free Youth Funding Toolkit, co-created by youth-led organisations and young project leaders.
We know we can’t fund every young leader who applies to The Iris Prize. In 2025 alone, hundreds were eligible for The Iris Prize, and we funded a small fraction of them. The toolkit is one way we’re trying to level that playing field. It shares practical guidance on fundraising, storytelling, budgets, reporting and donor relationships – the parts of leadership that are rarely taught but often determine whether a project survives.
Confidence grows when young leaders understand how funding works, know what questions to ask, and feel equipped to navigate systems that weren’t designed with them in mind. And because they’re young, the right next step won’t always be the same thing: sometimes it’s scaling a project, sometimes it’s pausing, sometimes it’s studying, sometimes it’s joining another organisation. That’s not failure – it’s growth.
If we want youth-led solutions to last, we have to fund what actually makes the work sustainable for young leaders – including the human side of leadership.
