Our Story
Despite the grave urgency of combating global climate change, less than 2% of global philanthropic funding is currently directed towards climate mitigation. Moreover, only a fraction of this funding is allocated to initiatives focused on Asia.
2014 to 2020:
Our Foundational Years
In response to this philanthropic gap, we began making grants to organisations working on climate change in East, Southeast, and South Asia (excluding China and India) in 2014. During this time, we operated as an initiative under the European Climate Foundation and provided support to key thought leaders and organisations focused on climate and energy in Asia. We also continued to build our understanding of how to make our grant-making as strategic as possible, while fostering collaboration.
2021 to Present:
Scaling-up Our Efforts
As our portfolio expanded, we recognised the need to establish an independent, regionally-based and regionally-led foundation to address the climate crisis. In 2021, we founded the Tara Climate Foundation in Singapore. Today, we continue to collaborate with a global network of foundations and stakeholders to scale our impact and accelerate climate action across Asia.
Our Vision, Mission & Roles
Our Vision
Our vision is a just and thriving society in Asia powered by renewable energy.
Our Mission
Our mission is to support a diverse group of partners to accelerate Asia’s energy transformation.
Our Roles
To execute our mission, we embody three key roles:
Re-granter
We systemically re-grant funds and work closely with key stakeholders to strategise how we can achieve our mission to accelerate Asia’s energy transformation.
Convener
We connect and support convenings and collaborations to drive the transition to clean energy.
Strengthening Organisations
We support the strengthening of organisations to achieve outcomes that are bigger than the sum of their parts.
Our Values
We go big or we go home.
We know our mission requires courage and ambition. We constantly stretch our comfort zones while holding ourselves accountable to high standards.
We find joy in collaboration.
Energy transformation can only be achieved when more of us work together. We thrill in building highly collaborative relationships amongst our team, our partners and the greater climate movement.
We celebrate the diversity of our region.
We cherish the diversity of our region, and we help empower and amplify the diverse voices from across the region to achieve Asia’s energy transformation together.
We’re nimble and resilient.
We anticipate and act on signals of change, moving quickly and strategically to adapt to the complexities of our work. When we confront challenges, we dust ourselves off and keep going.
We live the change we seek in the world.
We bring doses of integrity, honesty and humility in everything we do. We find time to smile.
