Meet the 2024-2025 Global Change Program Grantees
Through the Global Change Program, Incite Institute provides grants to leaders of initiatives around the globe that offer innovative, community-centered approaches to some of the world’s most pressing challenges, including climate breakdown, access to education, interstate conflict, and public health crises, among others.
Global Change Program grantees remain in the field during the award year while receiving intellectual support from Incite, including tailored opportunities for exchanging knowledge with scholars working on similar problems at Columbia University.
This summer we set out to award grants of up to $25,000 USD to support change-makers of all kinds, including activists, organizers, community leaders, scholars, and artists.
“After a selection process made difficult by the number of great applications we received, I'm absolutely thrilled with the projects we've partnered with this year,” said the program’s founder and Incite’s Director of Research, Evan McCormick.
“At different levels—from local to national to regional—and on a diverse range of topics from climate to health care, our GCP awardees are all leading projects designed to answer vital questions about the mechanisms determining the strength of democratic institutions in a changing world.”
With that, we are pleased to introduce you to our 2024–2025 Global Change Program grantees, who hail from Hungary, the Philippines, Argentina, and Canada.
Planning and People Power
Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺
The School of Public Life team in Budapest, Hungary.
Hungary is experiencing a rise in populist and illiberal government policies that create a challenging environment for civil society organizations (CSOs) to plan and operate in.
The School of Public Life, a grassroots civic education center founded in 2014 dedicated to building a democratic and just Hungary, is working to empower grassroots and civil society organizations through strategic planning tailored to their needs. Its Strategic Planning Collective facilitates two-day retreats wherein civil society leaders develop realistic, high-impact plans tailored to Hungary’s current political environment.
With support from the Global Change Program, Ágnes Fernengel, Eszter Jagodits, and Fanny Hajdú from the School of Public Life will expand this work with a seven-day "train the trainers" program and a year-long mentorship program for a dozen new strategic planning facilitators. In addition, the team will provide five days of strategic retreat sessions to less-resourced CSOs across the country.
In doing so, the School of Public Life aims to help CSOs become more effective, sustainable, and resilient.
Centering Indigenous Health Equity
Iloilo City, Philippines 🇵🇭
Atipan team member demonstrating a digi
As the Philippines rolls out universal healthcare, some of the country’s most marginalized people risk being left behind. Indigenous peoples in particular—who have faced centuries of land loss and discrimination through colonization and who live primarily in remote communities—have seen their needs fall to the wayside.
In response, Professors Romulo (Jong) de Castro, John Paul Petrola and Roselle Rivera at the University of San Agustin’s Center for Informatics have been working to enhance health outcomes in twelve underserved Indigenous communities. Through the Atipan Project, they have provided over 7,000 telehealth consultations and have trained 23 community health workers.
With support from the Global Change Program, the team, led by de Castro, will expand this work by hosting dialogues about healthcare access and needs among the Philippines’ Indigenous peoples. Dubbed Indigenous Health Equity Conversations, these sessions will be led by the Ati people, who have recently experienced a transition to more facile healthcare access via digital health through Atipan.
The Ati facilitators will relate their experiences in telehealth and engage other communities in discussing what health equity could and should look like. The key ideas and principles provided by participants will be distilled into policy recommendations to shape the Philippines’ ongoing implementation of universal healthcare toward more equitable outcomes for Indigenous communities.
Building a Latin American Hub for CSOs
Buenos Aires, Argentina 🇦🇷
Natalia Herbst, who is leading Latin America Strategy for Apolitical Foundation.
The expansion of democracy in Latin America over the last half-century has seen the emergence of a strong network of CSOs. However, against democratic backsliding, these organizations are facing challenges building networks, collaborating, and therefore raising funds.
Apolitical Foundation, a global nonpartisan movement organization based in Berlin, maintains a Political Leadership Entrepreneur Network (PLEN) that strengthens cross-CSO collaboration and learning around the world. Apolitical Foundation has tasked Latin America Strategy and Development Director Natalia Herbst with expanding the PLEN with a Latin America Hub.
With support from the Global Change Program, Herbst will be working to expand Latin American membership in this network, organize in-country meetings, facilitate regional collaborations, and connect CSOs with prospective funders. This work will support new program development in areas including organizational sustainability, mental well-being, women’s representation in politics, online violence, and political leadership.
The Latin America Hub aims to create a more connected and resilient, democracy-focused civil society throughout the continent while providing valuable insights to the Global North.
Climate Dialogues at Scale
Montreal, Canada 🇨🇦
Climate dialogue held in Quebec, Canada.
As Montreal, Canada faces the impacts of climate change, local nonprofit Institut du Nouveau Monde (INM) is recording climate dialogues to gather citizen perspectives on how to act. However, creating an inclusive dialogue involves producing a volume of audio, video, and transcript text that is difficult to make sense of using traditional means.
INM is working with fellow organization Transition en Commun—an alliance of citizen groups, CSOs, and the City of Montreal – to explore how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies can be used to organize and interpret these dialogues. The Global Change Program will support INM’s efforts to process these conversations by linking INM’s efforts to Incite’s own expertise in artificial intelligence and narratives.
This collaboration will contribute to a better understanding of citizen perspectives on climate transition in Montreal and spark conversations around the possibilities and limitations of artificial intelligence in civic-led initiatives.
We’ll keep you posted on our grantees’ work as their initiatives develop.
Support the Global Change Program
Each year, our Global Change Program receives hundreds of applications from promising community leaders across the country.
We’re currently accepting new sponsors and gifts for our 2025–2026 cohort. To make a gift or sponsor a grant, get in touch at incite@columbia.edu.
Incite Institute is an interdisciplinary research institute at Columbia University. We produce knowledge for public action. We do so by joining with people and organizations within and outside the university to rethink our understanding of what knowledge is, how it’s created, and how it can be used.