King County ECO supports community climate work with grant program, announces 2025-2026 recipients

Grantee recipients with Outreach and Transform Lives talk about their project.

Newly selected Community Climate Resilience Grant recipients gathered at the White Center Library in June for an orientation event meant to empower creativity, community, and inspiration. Each grantee crafted a piece to illustrate the results they envision from projects they will complete in connection with the grant program.

“What I have here is a bunch of folks who are sharing thoughts and ideas and joy, and information,” said Martin Tran of Golden Bricks Events as he tied his piece to a map of King County. Each grantee did the same, resulting in a representation of the many different types of work happening across the region. 

Grantee recipients illustrated their projects during a program orientation.

The King County Executive Climate Office (ECO) recently announced the recipients of its 2025-2026 Community Climate Resilience (CCR) Grant program, which funds community-based projects led by frontline communities.

Frontline communities are groups of people who face the impacts of climate change earlier and more acutely due to existing and historic racial, social, environmental, and economic inequities, and who have limited resources and capacity to adapt. Along with those challenges, frontline communities often have knowledge, expertise, and experience leading on solutions to the challenges that come with climate change. The CCR Grant program supports their capacity to lead.

Grantee recipients envision the results of their projects.

The six recipients were selected from 66 applications using a committee of reviewers and consensus-based decision-making.

“Reviewers were inspired by the diversity of projects and the initiative that applicants were taking to make change in their communities,” Climate Equity Capacity Building Program Manager Stephanie Ung said. “One can only imagine the challenge the review committee faced in narrowing down the final grant recipients.”

Ung says as the program moves into the next phase, King County intends to reduce reporting barriers and make the grant process as seamless as possible for recipients, while still ensuring accountability with the use of public funds. An intern from ECO's NextGen Climate Internship Program will assist with notetaking and documentation to ensure projects are tracked without adding a substantial burden for grantees.

This year’s grantees include:

• African Young Dreamers Empowerment Program International (AYDEPI): AYDEPI is a youth-led, adult-guided nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering African and African-American youth through education, mentorship, and community support by focusing on resilience, mental health awareness, and socio-economic opportunities. With CCR Grant funding, AYDEPI will engage youth and frontline communities to develop a circular food system that centers cultural identity, environmental sustainability, and community empowerment. The project will culminate in a Climate Resilience & Food Sovereignty Festival and result in a replicable model for other frontline communities in King County and beyond.
• Estelita’s Library: Estelita’s is a community library and cultural center; and an online bookstore with their collection focused on social justice, ethnic studies, liberation movements. Their space is modeled after Nicaraguan and US inner city community centerpieces where people of all ages and backgrounds can gather to talk, play, and organize. Estelita’s hosts community book talks, classes, organizing meetings, history lessons, mental health sessions, and more. CCR Grant funding will be used to work with The Common Acre to expand a community garden, and to collaborate with Sawhorse Revolution, Seattle Community Fridge, and Lil Lab to launch the Community Food Project. That will include designing a permanent Mutual Aid Station on-site with running water, a sink, a refrigerator, and basic resources.
• Golden Bricks Events (GBE): GBE is a company addressing belonging in the outdoors and conservation. They produce outdoor-focused experiences for BIPOC communities designed for emotional & physical safety, accessibility, connection, joy, and belonging. GBE will use CCR Grant funding to support the second annual Refuge Fest Youth Summit, a youth-centered gathering embedded within the Refuge Outdoor Festival at King County's Tolt-MacDonald Park in Carnation, WA. It will convene approximately 100 BIPOC youth ages 14-19 from across King County for a day of climate justice, nature-based education, healing-centered engagement, outdoor recreation, creative expression, and cultural celebration.
• Hip Hop is Green: Grounded in the powerful impact of hip hop culture, Hip Hop is Green is a nonprofit organization working to support holistic wellness and transform urban communities environmentally. Funding will support a new adaptation of Hip Hop is Green’s successful Youth Excellence Program (YEP) as they integrate learning modules on hydroponic agriculture into the program. YEP is a project-based, paid internship for youth ages 11-20 with a curriculum that centers climate change, social & environmental justice, health equity, food security, leadership, and more to participants.
• Outreach & Transform Lives: Outreach & Transform Lives is dedicated to empowering East African immigrants in King County through advocacy, education, and community engagement, and empowering youth leadership on environmental justice and other issues. Funding will support the group’s Community Heat Safety Resource Kits & Education Initiative, which aims to improve heat resilience among African immigrant and refugee communities in King County, particularly those who have recently arrived as asylum seekers from Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, Congo, and Zambia. The project addresses the growing risk of extreme heat by distributing 150 culturally tailored Heat Safety Kits and providing a youth-led educational workshop at the Kenya Christian International Community (KCIC) Church in Kent.
• Villa Comunitaria: Based in the South Park area, Villa Comunitaria started as the South Park Information and Resource Center and has evolved into a leadership development center empowering local families in culturally relevant ways. They offer programs on a variety of topics including helping Latinx immigrants navigate the complexities of the United States immigration, housing, health, education, and legal system. CCR Grant funding will support its Salsa De La Vida project, which aims to build food security in South Park's Latinx community through post-harvest food sovereignty activities at Marra Farm. The project will develop sustainable winter farming practices to enhance soil health and climate adaptation, preserve traditional agricultural knowledge, and increase community capacity to respond to climate-related food insecurity.

Grantee recipients discuss their project and listen to guidelines for the program.

Each of the projects aligns with a focus area within the Sustainable and Resilient Frontline Communities section of the King County Strategic Climate Action Plan (SCAP) or with work to reduce impacts of extreme heat on vulnerable populations. The SCAP-related focus areas include community capacity development, community health and emergency preparedness, food systems and food security, housing security and anti-displacement, and energy justice and utilities. Learn more about the SCAP here.

King County will be sharing grantees’ work throughout the course of the program. For updates, follow the King County Executive Climate Office (ECO) on Instagram or LinkedIn, and subscribe to the Climate Equity newsletter.

To learn about past grantee work, click here and view the attached video to hear from Real Change, one of the 2024-2025 recipients.