For the 2024 granting cycle of the Collective Fund for Climate and Ecological Transition at FGM, with a view towards environmental and social justice, the Fund will support organizations or projects aiming at empowering communities that are over-exposed to the effects of the climate crisis and adverse characteristics of their built environment and geographical area. Following the principles of the socio-ecological transition, initiatives scaled at the local level will be prioritized.

The organizations and projects being funded in 2024 are:


À nous la Malting
$12,000

À nous la Malting is a grassroots collective advocating for creating a 100% community-based housing project on the grounds of the former Canada Malting plant in the Saint-Henri neighbourhood. Its objective is to have more housing built in the area, but without gentrifying it further. The group stems from a grassroots urban planning project (OPA or operation populaire en aménagement in French) led by the local community roundtable, CDC Solidarité Saint-Henri. It has a comprehensive vision of addressing the issues related to poverty and social exclusion, such as the lack of social housing and local services and businesses, road traffic issues, the lack of community gardens and the rapid gentrification of the neighbourhood.

Visit À nous la Malting’s website


Coalition Mobilisations Citoyennes Environnementales de Laval
$12,000

The Coalition brings together twelve grassroots groups in Laval with a common goal to ensure the preservation and protection of the city’s last remaining green spaces. The role of the Coalition is to mobilize the groups, help them clarify their message and support their advocacy efforts with the local officials. The funds will be used to support the ongoing work of the Coalition leaders and activists. More specifically, the Coalition intends to pursue legal action to invalidate a zoning amendment for land owned by the city. Historically leased to farmers, this land is about to be chosen for the construction of a cinema complex.

Visit the Coalition’s website


Brique par Brique
$17,000

Brique par Brique is a non-profit organization created by community organizers of colour to respond innovatively and from a social justice perspective to the issues of gentrification in the Parc-Extension neighbourhood. Brique par Brique is known for its initiatives in developing affordable social housing, community spaces, cultural programming and social activities to strengthen social connections in this multi-cultural neighbourhood. The funding will help to integrate the principles of social and environmental justice and climate resilience in the development of the new social housing complex in Parc-Ex, through participatory design sessions with community members, particularly asylum seekers and women of colour, and advocate for better inclusion of community needs in the environmental design and municipal decision-making.

Visit Brique par Brique’s website


L’Écothèque
$20,000

L’Écothèque is a youth-led environmental activist movement that initiates and supports direct action, art and popular education projects for systems transformation. The group actively engages in social, anti-colonial, intersectional feminist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist struggles to build a just post-growth world. Over time, the group has also become a meeting point for activists from different backgrounds to co-create, imagine, fight, resist and have fun.

Visit Écothèque’s website


Mobilisation 6600 Parc-Nature MHM
$20,000

Mobilisation 6600 Parc-Nature MHM is a grassroots movement that advocates for the protection of green spaces, health, and the quality of life of the Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve community. The initiative began as a protest against a large industrial project connecting the Port of Montreal and Ray-Mont Logistiques (RML), which posed a threat to the environment and the residents’ health in the Assomption-Sud-Longue-Pointe (ASLP) neighborhood. The funding will be used to support the organization’s current priorities, such as enhancing its legal and scientific expertise, organizing various events to spread knowledge, strengthening connections between the community, and solidifying its partnership networks.

Visit Mobilisation 6600’s website


Transition en Commun (TeC)
$16,000

The mission of Transition en Commun (TeC) is to strengthen civic participation as a gateway to making the socio-ecological transition an actual society project. While we witness the emergence of many grassroots initiatives, only some have the conditions to grow and scale up. TeC aims to draw up a comprehensive inventory of existing democratic structures and mechanisms and their use by different population groups, identify areas of improvement, develop a better understanding of the barriers to participation experienced by certain groups, and make recommendations as to adapting existing mechanisms for the greater benefit of all.

Visit TeC’s website


Laval ZeN
$13,000

Laval Zen is a project focused on implementing the socio-ecological transition in Laval by transforming systems and lifestyles through a collective vision. Together with Chemins de la transition, Laval Zen has established committees to identify specific transition paths for Laval and to carry out initiatives on the ground. This process takes into account issues of social justice, inclusion, diversity, and, most importantly, addresses environmental inequalities that disproportionately affect the most vulnerable populations. This work will be carried out in collaboration with the PRDS (Politique régionale de développement social de Laval) team.

Visit Laval ZeN’s website


The Pivot Centre
$18,000

The Pivot Centre supports collective action aimed at building solidarity and empowerment in the face of social, economic and environmental injustices, focusing on the under-served communities and supporting them through training, accompaniment, community-based action research, etc. The Frontlines and Fencelines project connects frontline activists and creates a shared learning platform for urban communities adversely impacted by their proximity to the industries and for those affected by eco-gentrification. In the next three years, the Pivot Centre will facilitate forums, communities of practice and community discussions between the targeted neighbourhoods and cities to identify common strategies, build coalitions, and take collective action in the face of the climate crisis.

Visit the Pivot Centre’s website


SEIZE
$12,000

SEIZE is a worker-led solidarity economy incubator. Through its Solidarity Economy curriculum, SEIZE reaches a growing number of social and climate justice activists in Montreal and across Quebec and Canada, equipping them with theory and practical skills for organizing and creating solutions around environmental justice, housing rights, food sovereignty, unionizing, worker-owned economies and anti-oppression. The SEMI (Social Economy Mentorship Entrepreneurship) program aims to boost youth participation in the social solidarity economy (SSE) by empowering participants with the knowledge and skills they need to address the climate crisis through solidarity economy organizing. The second cohort of the SEMI program focuses on Youth-, BIPOC- and Newcomer- candidates already working on an SSE project and looking for mentorship and financial support to accelerate the project’s development.

Visit SEIZE’s website


CDC de Longueuil
$15,000

As part of Longueuil’s Climate Plan preparation and prior to its adoption, the city’s Diversity and Inclusion Department has joined the working group to address the challenges of climate change affecting marginalized populations. More work is needed to raise awareness of the Climate Plan and engage citizens and community groups in taking concrete actions. Efforts will focus on reaching the most affected and isolated populations through grassroots activities and collaboration with local initiatives.

Visit the CDC’s website


The Climate Justice Organizing HUB
$16,000

The Climate Justice Organizing HUB equips young climate justice leaders in Quebec and across Canada with the cultural, strategic and tactical knowledge and skills they need to mobilize and sustain local and large-scale mobilization and advocacy campaigns. The HUB supports local climate justice campaigns, mobilizations, and emergent leaders through training, coaching, and campaign incubators, creating an accessible knowledge base and nurturing intersectional collaborations between movements. The funding supports the HUB’s Montreal-based activities, including growing its local membership base, providing in-person and online training to climate justice activists, bringing the knowledge and tools developed by Montreal-based organizers to the regional climate justice groups and more.

Visit the HUB’s website


Workers for Climate Justice
$15,000

The Workers for Climate Justice (WCJ) collective brings together more than 10,000 individual and union members who are mobilizing to advance the vision of combating the climate crisis in their workplaces. WCJ works to raise awareness around climate justice in unionized workplaces through conferences, presentations, as well as support and capacity building of individual members who wish to initiate or advance conversation about the climate change in their workplaces. The organisation is also spearheading two major campaigns: Sortons le gaz (Let’s get gas out of our buildings) and Plaidoyer pour une éducation sur la transition écologique et sociale à tous les niveaux du système éducatif (For a comprehensive environmental and social education in schools and higher education).

Visit WCJ’s website


Jardins pour tous
$17,000

Jardins pour Tous is a community-owned and led initiative aimed at creating a network for urban agriculture and community greening in the Milton-Park area. The organization’s projects are designed to strengthen the sense of belonging and empower residents to collectively address issues such as food insecurity, social isolation, and lack of greenery. In addition to urban agriculture activities, the initiative also provides a job reintegration opportunity for a local resident to care for the garden, promoting social cohesion, reconciliation, increasing residents’ knowledge about Indigenous communities and reducing stigma attached to the local unhoused population.

Visit Jardins pour tous’ website


Comm-Un
$12,000

Comm-Un is a collective in the Milton-Park neighborhood that brings together people experiencing homelessness, street workers, students, artists, and activists. They are working together to propose alternative solutions to social issues, with a focus on homelessness. Comm-Un collaborates with local organizations to provide unhoused residents with access to urban agriculture, sustainable food, and nature-related activities. They also organize knowledge-sharing activities and promote Indigenous expertise, cultures and traditional knowledge. Additionally, the organization aims to document the lived experience and strategies developed by people experiencing homelessness to address the risks and adverse effects of climate crisis and advocate for more inclusive mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Visit Comm-Un’s website


Projet Harmonie
$15,000

Project Harmonie is an independent community organization established in 1995 to support the residents of La Pépinière, a social housing complex in the Mercier-Ouest neighborhood. Through a close collaboration between Project Harmonie and Synergie, a multidisciplinary research team focusing on social and health inequalities, around thirty residents of the housing complex have been involved in identifying and implementing concrete actions to improve the daily lives of their community. This includes addressing issues related to housing, food security, transportation, health, and access to social services, among other areas.

Visit Projet Harmonie’s website


Climate Justice Montreal
$20,000

Climate Justice Montreal (CJM) is a collective that advocates for environmental and climate justice through popular education, community mobilization, and collective action in solidarity with the affected communities. In 2022, CJM initiated a large-scale campaign for expanded, free, and accessible public transit. This initiative has been successful in mobilizing various stakeholders in climate and social justice movements and in building enduring connections among them. The goal of the campaign is to establish a broad network of allies, develop a platform for shared demands, and create effective tools that can be utilized by activist groups and other climate and social justice campaigns in Montreal and beyond.

Visit CJM’s website


Parents engagés pour la petite enfance (PEP)
$10,000

The mission of Parents engagés pour la petite enfance (PEP; Parents for Early Childhood) is to create accessible home-based early education programs and accompany parents from marginalized communities in the Côte-des-Neiges, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Côte-Saint-Luc neighborhoods in supporting and developing their children’s learning capacities. PEP’s Gardening and Healthy eating project offers families access to community mini-gardens and urban gardening activities. It allows local families to meet and exchange, access fresh and healthy food, while developing their own and their children’s skills in a safe and empowering environment.

Visit PEP’s website


Kahnawà:ke Collective Impact (KCI)
$20,000

Kahnawà:ke Collective Impact (KCI) is the grassroots project created in 2010 to respond to the socio-economic and cultural issues in Kahnawà:ke through community-wide collaboration. Its three priority areas are food sovereignty, holistic health, and wellness for youth, language, and culture. KCI aims to address the community plan’s three priority areas through a holistic project that ties together youth-led activities, transmitting cultural knowledge and teaching skills around food sovereignty and environmental sustainability by creating the first Indigenous 4-H club in Quebec. 4-H Club of Kahnawà:ke will offer a year-long program to youths (6 to 19 years old) focused on sustainable living skills, traditional practices and leadership.

Visit KCI’s website


DAWN Canada
$25,000

DAWN (DisAbled Women’s Network) Canada is a pan-Canadian organization that advocates for the rights of women, girls and gender-diverse people with disabilities and Deaf women in Canada. DAWN produces community-based research on different issues affecting women with disabilities, develops popular education curricula, raises public awareness and advocates for disability-inclusive policies on all levels. DAWN partners with Action Femmes et Handicap (AFH) to create effective outreach mechanisms and mobilize women, girls and gender-diverse people living with disabilities around the issues of climate justice and environmental inequities that disproportionately affect them. DAWN will build tools and resources to support AFH in outreach and convening young feminist activists across the Island of Montreal. Together, the partner organizations create a space for the activists to share their concerns, identify priorities and begin making connections to the larger climate justice movement in Montreal.

Visit DAWN Canada’s website

In closing, a reminder that priority is given in the granting process to initiatives that specifically aim to improve the quality of life of historically marginalized groups identified by FGM. The choice of organizations and projects is also made according to the principles of trust-based philanthropy. This approach has allowed the Foundation to strengthen the capacity of organizations and citizen groups that represent diversity and are active in the ecological transition, and support innovative and potentially high-impact initiatives.

Have a look at our Granting Strategy to better understand the values that guide our choices when we make grants to charitable organizations.