How Youth4Climate mentorship works, and who it is for

Youth4Climate’s 2026 mentorship is a six-month engagement run by the United Nations Development Programme, from June 2026 to December 2026. It is for young people whose climate projects are already under way, and for the experienced professionals matched to them. The call that asked mentors to put their names forward closed on 18 May 2026 at 23:59 Central European Summer Time. What follows is how the programme is built, not an invitation to join it.

Hours, pay, and the projects

The required piece is one-to-one mentorship. A selected mentor is expected to give at least two hours a month. Those hours can be spread across the month, around both calendars and the awardee’s needs. The support covers how a project is designed, carried out, unblocked and grown, including business operations, finance and readiness for investment. Every selected mentor is matched with at least one awardee. The role is unpaid. Mentors may be named in UNDP communications, invited to events and given a certificate.

The people UNDP described for the mentor side are mid-level and senior professionals, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, investors, academics and technical experts with at least five years of relevant experience. Earlier mentoring is welcome and is not required. The fields named are climate finance and fundraising, investment readiness and pitching, scaling a venture, storytelling, communications and advocacy, sustainable energy, food systems, nature-based solutions, digital innovation, and measuring impact.

On the awardee side, mentors support people from the latest Youth4Climate call for solutions, across regions. The programme points to work already in motion, such as solar-powered cold storage that cuts food loss for small farmers, digital tools for farming under a harder climate, cleaner energy for communities that are poorly served, and circular models that turn waste into useful products. Projects may be at a pilot stage or in an early scale-up.