• Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate activist who advocates for a humanitarian approach to the climate crisis, emphasising urgent action for vulnerable communities and greater inclusion of Africa in global climate discussions.
• As part of Nakate’s cause, she implemented the VASH Green Schools Project in 2019, which has since reached 75 schools in rural Uganda and created a measurable impact on the community level. 
• Uganda’s climate financing system remains a challenge for grassroots initiatives, as it prioritises large-scale projects perceived to have greater global impact, limiting support for community-led efforts and slowing progress towards climate justice.

Why is Vanessa Nakate’s heat level MILD?

Answer: Vanessa Nakate is MILD as her VASH Green Schools Project has progressed slowly over seven years of operation. 

Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate activist advocating for immediate action from high-income countries to address the loss and damage suffered by vulnerable communities in the low-income ones. The VASH Green Schools project (VASH) of 2019, managed by Vanessa Nakate’s Tard Foundation in collaboration with ClimateGains, exemplifies a grassroots approach to the clean energy transition agenda. The project installs solar panels and clean institutional stoves in rural Ugandan schools, addressing energy poverty and deforestation while improving education quality and well-being by providing sustainable energy access to communities that rely too heavily on biomass resources, at times depleting natural resources, such as firewood and charcoal. 

The VASH Project reflects patterns of slow yet progressive growth commonly observed among independent small grassroots initiatives. The project has reached 75 rural schools in Uganda, installing 75 clean cooking stoves and 60 solar panels at an estimated cost of $3,000 per school. In 2023 they aimed to raise $300,000 to fund installations for 100 schools as a near-term target. As of July 2026, the project has raised $75,415 through grassroots donations independently via GoFundMe. Likewise, they received $150,000 from a private foundation in 2023 to fund school installations, which allowed grassroots donations to be redirected toward project development and expansion in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Measured against their 2023 goal, the 2026 donations rate reflects a relatively stable growth, given the absence of a publicly stated goal timeframe. This reflects the limitations of similar grassroots initiatives reliant on public support, compounded by the project’s few and inconsistent impact reporting, with the latest update dating back to 2024.

Nakate’s main challenge remains the centralised nature in Uganda’s climate finance system, a structural problem experienced by grassroots initiatives similar to the VASH Project. In particular, Uganda receives $785 million annually in climate finance, however 80% of funds are allocated to large initiatives within institutional frameworks. Meanwhile, most independent grassroots initiatives lack the capacity to overcome bureaucratic processes. Combined with the lack of government support towards community-led efforts, there are not many incentivising factors for small initiatives like VASH to expand and reach more vulnerable communities. In turn, it hinders implementation pace and overall expansion rate.

What is changing Vanessa Nakate’s heat level?

Answer: Nakate’s VASH project benefits from her affiliation and global recognition, yet public opinion on her endeavors slows down the progress. 

Nakate’s heat level is sustained by her global recognition as a climate activist, giving her credibility as a non-traditional lobbyist in the climate finance agenda. The visibility and credibility of the VASH Project have been supported both by recognition from United Nations (UN) affiliated initiatives and Nakate’s  affiliation as a UN Children’s Fund GoodWill Ambassador.

In particular, this helped the project gain formal recognition as part of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ”Green Citizen” Initiative. She was also recognised as a UN Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for her project’s alignment with global climate goals. Additionally, by advocating for more inclusive climate finance at COP27, Nakate underscored the persistent barriers to extending climate action to grassroots communities. Nevertheless, these efforts have yet to produce substantial progress. 

At the same time, Nakate faces public pressure, with criticism often targeting her age, race, gender, and political positions. This includes her criticism of the Ugandan government’s inaction towards the climate crisis and criticism towards world leaders from high-emitting nations for failing to take responsibility for global emissions. For example, her video response to being cropped out of a photo with Western activists at the 2020 Davos World Economic Forum was seen as irrational by some critics, while her age was often used to frame her as naive and inexperienced. In this context, public scrutiny can redirect attention away from her climate advocacy and undermine public support of her initiatives, creating a barrier to her influence and projects’ growth. 

What is driving Vanessa Nakate?

Answer: Nakate’s commitment to the VASH Project is driven  by witnessing the climate consequences on Uganda’s most vulnerable communities.

The primary drivers of Nakate’s involvement in climate activism are her upbringing and the state of Uganda’s environment. The country is among the most vulnerable to climate change, with rising temperatures leading to unpredictable weather conditions, intensified droughts and floods, aggravating environmental degradation and deforestation. 

Nakate became involved in climate discussions having witnessed the effects of climate change communities suffering from the 2018 floods in the swathes of the East of Africa and in Uganda’s capital Kampala. She reflected on how these communities had little to no means to rebuild their livelihoods in the aftermath, eventually shaping her climate advocacy to focus on immediate support for those directly affected. While Nakate rejects the perspective of climate justice simplified to reducing emissions and reaching net-zero targets, she advocates for adding a humanitarian factor to the agenda that most institutions ignore. 

She frames the climate crisis as a humanitarian one, thereby calling for immediate action to address the loss and damage affecting vulnerable communities in low- and middle-income countries. Her motivation for launching the initiative was informed by her firsthand experience of visiting a Ugandan school with unreliable electricity and by her awareness that many schools and households depend on firewood and charcoal for cooking and heating, exacerbating deforestation across the country. For that reason, she argues that communities must be provided with actionable, scalable and holistic solutions that offer alternatives to environmentally degrading practices. 

What does this mean for you?

Answer: Despite its limited scale, Nakate’s VASH project proves that grassroots initiatives can drive meaningful community-level impact in the clean energy transition.

While the VASH project faces challenges in scaling, the initiative still delivers meaningful community-level impact. Firstly, the project has positively impacted the well-being and education quality of 20,000 students in rural communities through the provision of solar panels in schools, allowing for longer study hours. Secondly, the clean cookstove installations in rural schools reduced firewood dependency by 50% on a community level, lessening the need to exploit local forests and rely on environmentally degrading cooking practices. 

Generally, resource constraints remain a barrier to the growth of grassroots initiatives growth despite many providing a good cause and community inclusive solutions. Initiatives similar to Nakate’s VASH project often rely on small donations and compete for grants with institution-backed projects. In this context, the need for policy inclusion and the decentralisation of climate finance are needed to further mobilise the grassroots movements to expand community-level impact and reduce the funding gap. 

On a global scale, the VASH project remains an illustrative example of the main weakness in climate governance – climate finance often fails to reach local actors who are most qualified to deliver impact. The underfinancing of community-level initiatives continuously undermines progress towards climate justice and SDGs, and prolongs communities’ vulnerability to climate impacts and increases their reliance on unsustainable practices for their daily livelihoods. 

For Nakate to overcome financing barriers, the best strategy is to increase the project’s visibility to secure international grants and public support. Should Nakate be unable to mobilise more donations, her broader advocacy will remain MILD in the long term. Given Uganda’s centralised climate finance system, the priority should be given to increasing the pool of international donors who value the project’s cause and agenda.