Grants Support Leaders

Recent Recipients

New York

Jack Kriegel

At 16, Jack is already building platforms for climate leadership in his community. A high school student in Hartsdale, New York, he co-founded News Flash, a student-run online climate blog, and launched a companion podcast inviting local teens and community leaders to share their experiences with climate concern, advocacy, and action. By giving students a public voice, Jack is transforming private worry into collective momentum.

Jack also volunteers with the Jewish Youth Climate Movement, a program of Adama, which brings Jewish values to the shared work of building a more just and sustainable world.

A Merlyn Climate Grant helps Jack expand his impact inside his own school. His project is a four-week sustainability challenge designed as a friendly, school-wide competition. Each week, students receive three practical, achievable climate-focused tasks that build awareness and encourage lasting habits. Each task carries a point value, and students earn points by submitting photo (or other appropriate) confirmation of completed actions, reviewed by grade deans.

Examples of Weekly Challenges:

  • Bring a zero-waste lunch for three separate school days.
  • Post a climate awareness message on Instagram or Snapchat.
  • Bring a reusable water bottle on three separate school days.
  • Plant a native seed using a provided kit.

At the end of four weeks, students with the highest point totals receive prizes — but the larger reward is a more climate-aware student body. Jack’s program turns everyday choices into visible action, and action into community engagement.

Jack is receiving a Merlyn “matching grant.” If he raises additional funds within his community, Merlyn Climate Grants will partially match those funds, doubling the impact of his project while building local awareness and investment. Grant funds support the purchase of LED bulbs, plant and seed kits, reusable equipment, and modest prize awards for student participants.

 

New York

Garrett Marino

Garrett has immersed himself in volunteer and professional leadership across New York’s Adirondack region, driven by a commitment to make his community more climate-resilient, more connected, and better informed about climate impacts locally and globally.

A recent graduate of Skidmore College, Garrett serves in youth leadership roles at The Wild Center, where he helps manage two youth fellowship programs and plans the annual Adirondack Youth Climate Summit. He also serves as Director-at-Large for the Adirondack region of the New York State Association of Conservation Commissions and leads a volunteer climate task force for the Village of Saranac Lake. Across these roles, his work consistently emphasizes youth empowerment and community-centered climate action.

Some Merlyn grants support highly targeted new initiatives. Garrett’s grant is different. Rather than funding a single program, it strengthens the infrastructure behind many of them. The most significant barrier to coordinating the wide range of community efforts he leads has been the lack of a reliable personal computer beyond his employer-issued device.

Support from Merlyn Climate Grants will allow Garrett to purchase a dedicated laptop — a practical but essential tool that enables him to organize volunteers, plan events, communicate with partners, and sustain the momentum of multiple climate initiatives across the Adirondacks.

In this case, a modest investment in equipment amplifies the impact of an already committed young climate leader.

Massachusetts

Gustavo Nascimento

Alongside Megan Lim at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Chaz Garraway at Northeastern University, Brandeis student Gustavo Nascimento launched the Cross Campus Climate Coalition — an initiative designed to build meaningful cross-campus collaboration for climate action across Greater Boston.

The Coalition emerged in response to a clear gap in student climate infrastructure. Students working on climate solutions are often disconnected — not only from peers at other universities, but even from parallel efforts within their own institutions. The Cross Campus Climate Coalition strengthens that missing connection, creating shared space for student leaders to coordinate across campuses and engage with city and university climate planning efforts.

At the heart of the Coalition’s work are its Cross-Campus Climate Mixers. Rotating among different campuses and community venues, these gatherings ensure that no single institution dominates the conversation and that climate action remains accessible to a broad range of students. Designed to be interactive rather than presentation-heavy, mixers feature peer-to-peer workshops, collaborative problem-solving sessions, and connections with local organizations. The result: new relationships, shared strategies, and sustained collaboration across institutions.

Support from Merlyn Climate Grants makes this infrastructure possible. The grant helps cover venue costs, food, transportation, and materials for hands-on activities — ensuring that events remain free, inclusive, and well-resourced for students from diverse campuses and backgrounds.

By investing in connection, this grant amplifies the collective power of student climate leadership across Boston.

Connecticut

Adrian Huq

Adrian Huq (holding the microphone in photo) since high school has led successful student climate initiatives in New Haven, Connecticut.  A leader and founding member of the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team, Adrian helped bring about the passage of the New Haven Climate Emergency Resolution, only the second such legislation in Connecticut and 29th in the nation.  A Merlyn Climate Grant supported Adrian's recruitment, training and mentoring of four new climate education interns attending New Haven area high schools.  The interns collaborated with teachers to create and distribute compelling climate materials, organize webinars, produce educational videos and graphics, and inspire teachers and area leaders to step up their involvement in the climate challenge. The effort, under the Climate Health Education Project(CHEP), is approaching its seventh successful year and is a project of the New Haven/Leon Sister City Project. 

Maine

Pooja Tilvawala

Pooja Tilvawala founded Youth Climate Collaborative (YCC). Its mission is to make it easier for youth to get involved and remain involved in climate and sustainable development work and to foster meaningful collaboration among youth leaders. Her Merlyn Climate Grant helped fund the planning, testing, and launch of Climate Courage Workshops. The workshops assist leaders 13 to 30 in learning how to manage their feelings caused by climate change, create a self-care plan, and build their emotional resilience. Each workshop consists of two sessions across two weeks, about two hours each week, and serves up to 15 young leaders in each session. 

2020-2021 Recipients

Rhode Island

Emma Bouton

Emma earned a second Merlyn Climate Grant to continue her breakthrough work in Rhode Island organizing and training new youth leaders in building and running climate and de-carbonization campaigns. 

Rhode Island

Rachael Baker

Rachael's grant allowed her to accept the challenge of becoming the  first Executive Community Director of a Sunrise hub in Providence, RI. Sunrise educates Rhode Island's elected and business leaders about fossil fuel's damaging impact on young people's future health and survival.  

New York

Georgia Wright

Georgia created the podcast Inherited to raise and sustain morale among climate activists. It features peer-to-peer interviews and highlights tools by and for young leaders on climate. She lives in New York.

New York

Celia Darling

Working with fellow Rochester, NY, high school students Liam Smith and Hridesh Singh (pictured), Celia co-launched New York Youth Climate Leaders, a fast-growing advocacy alliance of 80+ youth and student climate organizations. Her Merlyn Climate Grant paid for apps and software that allow alliance members far afield to collaborate remotely and plan actions together.

Rhode Island

Mycala McKay

Mycala designed a newsletter and networking capacity to connect and bond youth climate groups across Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts.

Massachusetts

Natalia

A middle school student in Western Massachusetts, Natalia recruited business and environmental organizations to launch a tree-planting project in her hometown. It has since entered its second year and seeded projects in area towns. 

Massachusetts

Violette Ballecor

Violette attends Boston University. Her grant facilitated the demanding planning of a Youth Lobby Day in Maine and New Hampshire. It's helping build the political will there for legislative action on climate.

2019 Recipients

Massachusetts

Molly Gun

Molly created a campaign in her Massachusetts town to teach drivers about the impact of car idling on carbon emissions

Maine

Sarah Wineberg

Sarah launched a kelp farm in the shallow waters of Muscongus Bay, in Maine.

Rhode Island

Emma Bouton

Emma is a recent graduate of Brown. She co-leads the Brown Sunrise Hub, training student and community volunteers in educating local business and government leaders about climate change and its impact on her generation.

Rhode Island

Alex Kithes

Alex earned his Masters of Science in Engineering at Brown. He helped organize efforts to write climate legislation for Rhode Island. Since earning his grant, he has run for and won a seat on a city council in Rhode Island, making him one of the youngest council members in the city's history.

New York

Maleha Mahmud

A Masters student in Biology, Maleha designed climate programing and studied the Bronx River with students from New York City public schools.

Rhode Island

Brittany DiCenzo

Brittany started a composting facility serving her area and greater Rhode Island.

Rhode Island

Luke Meisel

Luke is fourteen years old. He created a local Rhode Island magazine encouraging intergenerational dialogue on our climate future.

Rhode Island

Nicole Paolo

Nicole organized and co-led two successful climate strikes in Rhode Island.

2018 Recipients

Massachusetts

Reginald Fils

A student at Bentley University, in Waltham, MA, Reginald speaks in schools, afterschool programs, and youth groups throughout his Boston community on issues related to business, finance, and entrepreneurship. (His was one of the earliest Merlyn Grants, like those below, before the grant focus went exclusively to climate leadership.) 

Massachusetts

Ngoc-Tran Vu

Born and raised in Dorchester, a Boston neighborhood, Ngoc-Tran Vu ("Tran") is a community organizer and multimedia artist. As a Vietnamese-American in Dorchester’s large Vietnamese community, she grew up fascinated by the long history of her family and the families around her.

Tran wanted to create a way to share that narrative with and for her community. She began working with local businesses, youth, and elders to develop a public art project in the heart of Dorchester. The massive mural, nearly three stories tall, has become a community focal piece. It tells the rich stories of the Vietnamese people and the people of Dorchester in a way that is honest, healing, and empowering.

“The steering committee was intergenerational, a group of residents both Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese, but I really wanted to engage with young people who could carry on the history and the narrative moving forward. It was important to me that it came locally. Dorchester is a working-class community, and the stories you hear about it in the media are often negative, but a lot of people don’t realize how much art and culture and vibrancy there is for people both inside and outside the community. There is a lot of talent and stories from people in this community,” says Tran of her work. “I think it’s both empowering and healing. The role of the artist is to create spaces that people can relate to, can share, but also feel empowered in.”

Tran received a grant to develop a website that will support the community mural project. She hopes the site will bring people from far afield to the mural and start more conversations -- the way it has with folks in her neighborhood. “The mural talks about the journey of the immigrant and refugee experience in a way that’s universal,” she says. “I want art to become a tool for engagement and for sharing our narratives.”

Trans says she learned through this project that collaboration is a key to positive, sustainable community activism.“You don’t always have to start something from scratch. A lot of times the best ideas come from collaboration. A community mural was not a brand new idea, but really figuring out why it was important and how it would connect to this community was valuable. People have stories that need to be told from their perspective.” For more on mural and its development, go to:https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/vietnamese-mural-students/

Massachusetts

Gabe Lamanuzzi

When Gabe Lamanuzzi moved to the Boston area, he sought out ways to get involved right away with his new community. Concerned most about alcohol and drug abuse prevention, he hoped to use his writing and education background to start making positive change. He decided the best way was to link up with an established local nonprofit and provide his skills to expand their reach. “I wanted to get involved with Improbable Players right away,” he says. “They caught my interest immediately because through friends and family members I’ve been affected by addiction, and I think it extends to every level of society. It can tear families apart, and addiction affects society as a whole.”

Gabe plans to use his grant to help the group develop a podcast, expanding its reach and accessibility. He believes that helping share their message widely will further raise awareness of issues related to alcohol and drug abuse and provide support for those who may love someone struggling with addiction. “The moment I realized I could really help was the first time I shared my story at a meeting [for loved ones of addicts],” Gabe explains. “I received overwhelming feedback on how it could help others overcome their own pain, loss, struggle. It’s not easy to share these stories, but it helps. We are at our best when we are connecting and sharing.”

Gabe hopes he can help broaden the dialogue around alcohol and drug abuse. “The ripple effect of an individual’s action in society can be profound,” says Gabe of his desire to be an agent for change in his community.  “You have a responsibility to take action and not to stand idly by when there is injustice or pain.”