As part of the 2025-2026 edition of the Foundation of Greater Montréal (FGM)’s Collective Fund for Climate and Ecological Transition, in a perspective of social and environmental justice, the Fund will support initiatives aiming to empower and mobilize communities facing the impacts of the climate crisis and to combat its root causes.

All told, 144 initiatives have been submitted through the call for projects. After a rigourous analysis by the Fund’s advisory committee, we are proud to introduce the 16 grantees of the 2025-2026 edition:

Allions-Nous
LaSalle

Allions-Nous is a citizen organization whose mission is to protect and repurpose the buildings of the former Allion School, which have remained vacant for over 15 years. Their aim is to create a hub for socio-ecological transition that will benefit the residents of LaSalle and surrounding areas. As part of these efforts, Allions-Nous has developed a temporary use project for the former schoolyard to rally residents and enable local action, as well as a full activity program to breathe new life into the vacant site with the participation of residents, community organizations, and the borough of LaSalle. Community members have proposed numerous ideas to enliven the site and lay the groundwork for what will become a true community space for gathering and sharing ideas.

Visit Allions-nous’ website

Mobilisation Boisés et écologie – Châteauguay (BEC)
Châteauguay

Boisés et écologie – Châteauguay (BEC) is a citizen initiative dedicated to protecting, preserving, and ensuring the vitality of natural environments and biodiversity in the urban area of Châteauguay, while advocating for municipal policies aimed at creating a high-quality, equitable, and climate-resilient living environment for future generations. The initiative includes several components: popular education, citizen engagement, lobbying elected officials, attending municipal council meetings, drafting briefs, forming networking and strategic alliances, developing socio-ecological transition initiatives, and taking legal action to protect urban natural areas threatened by residential and commercial development.

Visit BEC’s website

Campagne Le vivant se défend
Greater Montreal

Le vivant se défend (Life Defends Itself) is a popular education and citizen engagement initiative led by environmental activists. Its aim is to raise awareness and mobilize residents and community members living near the Enbridge 9B pipeline in Greater Montreal about the pipeline’s environmental and public health and safety risks and organize.

Visit Le vivant se défend’s webpage

Coalition Mobilisations Citoyennes Environnementales de Laval
Laval

The Coalition Mobilisations Citoyennes Environnementales de Laval is made up of 12 groups working toward sustainable development, environmental and biodiversity protection, democratic justice, and citizen engagement. It was created by residents concerned by the rapid loss of woodlands, local green spaces, and agricultural land in Laval who recognized the urgent need to take action.

The initiative aims to strengthen citizen engagement and put constructive pressure on the Ville de Laval to encourage sound democratic governance and the adoption of good land use practices. It also seeks the creation of an independent and impartial institution, such as a public consultation office, to ensure more transparent and inclusive governance.

Visit the CMCEL’s website

Colectiva Polea
Greater Montreal

With the St. Lawrence River as its starting point, this project invites participants to contribute to the creation of a collective quilt, both handmade and digital. This sensitively crafted work will weave connections between different waterways while reflecting the participants’ personal experiences and unique journeys. Through a series of 12 workshops exploring a variety of artistic tools and techniques—video projection and mapping, natural dyeing, embroidery, and digital collage—the project seeks to nurture diverse identity narratives anchored in waterways and thereby foster resilience. By centring embodied knowledge and collaborative practices, this approach opens up new ways of imagining our relationship with living beings and the environment, while highlighting how everyone can contribute to ecological and social transformation in their own way. In doing so, the project affirms the power of art as a vehicle for empowering narratives and building communities of solidarity in the face of today’s climate challenges.

Visit Colectiva Polea’s webpage

La Guillotine publishing and printing collective
Greater Montreal

La Guillotine is an independent feminist publishing and printing collective that seeks to share its passion for paper and craft bookbinding. Deeply committed to social and environmental causes, La Guillotine supports like-minded activist organizations in carrying out their printing projects, including posters, zines, apparel, and more. Led by dedicated activists with technical expertise, La Guillotine aims to ensure the long-term viability of its activities while increasing the number of activist groups it can serve.

Visit La Guillotine’s website

Defend the Movement Québec (DMQ)
Greater Montreal

Defend the Movement Québec (DMQ) protects the rights of individuals and groups engaged in the fight for social and environmental justice, providing legal education and support for progressive activists, as well as training for law students. DMQ offers two essential services to progressive activists in the Greater Montreal area. First, DMQ provides them with information about their legal rights and risks, equipping activists with the resources they need to carry out meaningful and impactful actions in support of environmental justice and other social movements. Second, DMQ defends such activists, who are increasingly criminalized for the legitimate expression of their positions on environmental justice and human rights issues. Both of these components support DMQ’s core mission: strengthening engaged legal practice by training the next generation of activist lawyers in Quebec.

Visit DMQ’s website

Gardens of Hope
Kanehsatà:ke

The Gardens of Hope is an initiative of the Indigenous people of Kanehsatà:ke. Their mission is to create a space for sharing, transmitting, and promoting ecological knowledge, with a focus on the traditional, cross-cultural, and intergenerational knowledge of First Nations. In addition to growing and distributing free, fresh produce to community members, the Gardens provide an educational and healing space for people experiencing marginalization, as well as opportunities for communities to connect and learn about the history of relations between the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation and non-Indigenous peoples and the importance of reconciliation.

Visit the Gardens of Hope’s webpage

Les Jardins à partager
Saint-Hubert

Launched in 2017 by Développement social Saint-Hubert, this urban garden project was inspired by the film Tomorrow (2015) and the Incredible Edible global movement, which views gardening and urban agriculture as a driver of socioecological and economic transition. Initiatives such as this one are among our solutions for the future. Urban gardens enable community members to join forces and pool resources to create shared edible abundance, forge links between the food system’s various actors (community, institutional, and citizen partners), and actively contribute to a more sustainable and resilient world.

Visit the Jardins à partager’s webpage

Last Generation Canada
Greater Montreal

Last Generation Canada is a non-violent civil disobedience movement advocating for concrete actions in the face of the climate emergency. Gathering people from diverse walks of life, the movement aims to put pressure on the federal government so that it protects its citizens. It favours direct actions such as roadblocks, symbolic interventions and awareness campaigns. Its activists are looking to mobilize public opinion and denounce the inaction of the people in charge. The movement demands, among other things, the creation of a national agency tasked with protecting the public against climate catastrophes, to be funded through a tax on billionnaires, as well as the implementation of citizen assemblies with decision-making power. It falls under an approach of climate justice, affirms the key role of citizen mobilization in the ecological transition, and relies on art, dialogue and peaceful confrontation to make itself heard.

Visit Last Generation’s website

Voix de l’engagement: Perspective des femmes Noires et racisées sur l’environnement
Greater Montreal

Led by Alexandra Pierre, this project aims to gather, recontextualize, and activate the stories and knowledge of Black and racialized women and queer people about the environment, racism, and environmental justice crises, while creating spaces for reflection and action by, for, and with them. It also aims to bridge gaps between these groups and mainstream feminist and environmental movements, while providing participants with tools to influence policies, mobilize resources, and create sustainable networks to support systemic change. Exeko will offer workshops, conferences, and reflection and collective action labs, as well as educational events where community members can learn about and explore alternative perspectives on the environment.

This collective requested not to have their name publicly disclosed
Greater Montreal

This initiative aims to rally and support various grassroots groups in Greater Montreal and across Quebec that oppose extractive and colonial economic land development. It also seeks to address their needs by providing logistical support for local struggles and creating bonds of solidarity and mutual aid between these groups.

Prenons la ville
Island of Montreal

Prenons la Ville is a non-partisan movement that brings together citizens and citizen groups, community and rights organizations, and other civil society actors advocating for or working on five main types of issues: housing rights and community environments; climate resilience and environmental protection; sustainable and accessible mobility; democracy; and economic and social justice. Prenons la Ville creates a space for these actors to come together and discuss local struggles across Montreal, building citizen power through popular education on the overlapping issues of environmental, social, and democratic justice. It aims to strengthen citizens’ collective voice, support alternative projects, and advocate for a more just and sustainable vision of society.

Visit PLV’s website

The Small Change Fund project from the Climate Justice Hub
Greater Montreal

The Climate Justice Organizing HUB is a needs-responsive support structure for organizers of grassroots social and climate justice movements across Quebec and Canada. Through free, accessible workshops and coaching on grassroots organizing and training and discussion sessions on movement strategizing, the HUB helps organizers build a critical mass of engaged people fighting for a just transition.

Visit the Hub’s website

Tkà:nios – It Grows
Kahnawà:ke

A grassroots initiative led by women in Kahnawà:ke, Tkà:nios aims to revitalize Haudenosaunee culture, food sovereignty, and ecological stewardship through land-based learning and the development of climate change resilience strategies for the community. Tkà:nios offers educational activities, supports a community-led revival of sustainable horticulture and food gathering, advocates for land preservation, and creates knowledge-sharing networks between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Visit Tkà:nios’ webpage

Workers for Climate Justice
Greater Montreal

Workers for Climate Justice (WCJ) is the first environmentalist initiative dedicated exclusively to organizing within the workplace. The collective leverages union structures to directly challenge the harmful economic practices at the root of our ecological crises, while respecting people’s right to a just ecological transition that values human beings. WCJ’s mission focuses on four strategic priorities: transforming workplaces, developing scenarios for the socioecological transformation of economic sectors, union mobilization for the common good, and the democratization of the economy. To achieve these goals, WJC offers popular education and organizing training, while helping to create alternative democratic spaces within worker collectives.

Visit WCJ’s website

FGM’s work as part of this Fund was guided by the principles of trust-based philanthropy and participatory grantmaking, as well as our commitments related to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. The Foundation of Greater Montréal is grateful to the members of the Fund’s advisory committee, members of the community who participated in our consultations, as well as every group or organization who submitted an initiative. We also thank the Echo Foundation and the Fondation François Bourgeois for their generous contributions to the Fund.

Take a look at our Strategic Distribution Framework to better understand the values that guide our granting choices.