OUR PROGRAMS
CHAPTERs
The Climate Cardinals Chapters Program empowers youth leaders to build climate-ready, resilient communities by providing localized climate education where it is limited or missing, especially in non-English-speaking regions.
Chapters are led by young people already rooted in their communities, who bring deep local knowledge and a strong track record of action.
Each chapter operates independently within a school, university, or local community, leading initiatives that reflect their unique context.
Chapter leaders receive mentorship, strategic support, and access to a global network of peers, allowing them to exchange ideas, learn from diverse experiences, and collaborate across borders.
Fellowship
Our Fellowship Program empowers emerging social impact leaders to grow as changemakers while advancing Climate Cardinals’ core mission.
The academic year-long program provides mentorship, microgrants, and a formalized curriculum including modules on nonprofit strategy, budgeting basics, public speaking, digital strategy for impact, and more.
Fellows apply these skills through hands-on experiential learning, working across key organizational workflows, including partnerships, impact evaluation, and translations; all aimed at breaking down language barriers and expanding access to climate knowledge.
Our goal is to cultivate a sustainable pipeline of young leaders who take a social impact lens with them well beyond the Fellowships, ensuring that climate-conscious, community-rooted leadership shapes every sector of the future.
translations
Our Translations Program breaks language barriers in the climate movement by mobilizing volunteers to translate critical climate information into over 100 languages.
Through partnerships with organizations like UNICEF, Yale, and Google, we ensure that non-English-speaking communities have access to vital climate knowledge.
We provide human-verified free and low rate translations to grassroots, youth-led and other social impact organizations and offer market-rate translations to large nonprofits, companies, and government agencies.
Volunteers receive training, resources, and support to make climate information more inclusive and actionable worldwide.
FAQS
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Climate Cardinals is a youth-led organization committed to transparency, inclusivity, and community-driven leadership. Our Senior Leadership team is composed of 3 out of 5 women and 100% multilingual individuals, with over 30 years of collective experience managing multimillion-dollar budgets and advising global leaders, including the UN Secretary-General, EPA Administrator, and WHO Director-General.
We regularly engage our community through office hours, quarterly program calls, and annual all-hands meetings to share updates and gather feedback. Structured input from our chapters, fellows, translators, ambassadors, and thought leadership contributors informs ongoing program improvement. Senior Leadership also conducts one-on-one check-ins with active volunteers around the world.
Each pillar of our five-year strategic plan includes qualitative and quantitative Key Performance Indicators, tracked quarterly through a live internal dashboard. Beginning in 2024, we publish an Annual Impact Report in November and an Internal Biannual Report in July to assess progress and identify opportunities to strengthen our impact.
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AI and machine translation have opened powerful possibilities for scaling access to information. Machine translation can process content in seconds, helping us reach more people faster than ever before. But speed doesn’t always equal accuracy—especially when it comes to languages with limited digital resources.
Low-resource languages—like many Indigenous, regional, or under-digitized languages—are often underrepresented in AI training data. As a result, machine translations in these languages are frequently inaccurate, incomplete, or simply unavailable. Over 90% of machine translation funding goes to just ten languages, leaving billions underserved.
Even in well-resourced languages, machine translation can miss tone, context, and cultural meaning. That’s especially dangerous when sharing climate information, where clarity and trust can mean the difference between action and inaction. Automated translations must be reviewed and adapted to meet real community needs.
We’re tech-positive and believe in the power of AI. But it’s not enough on its own. The future isn’t one without human translators—instead, it’s one where translators use AI to do their work better. That’s why we combine technology with human insight: to build tools that are fast, fair, and trusted.