Available to innovation-oriented NGOs and Networks based in Laos

Does your organisation have any experience in facilitating workshops and organising festivals and celebrations? Do you have experiences in mentoring/coaching small(-er) organisations in their innovation journey?  Is your organisation adept at facilitating dynamic learning experiences with diverse groups of people? Do you have deep and extensive experience working with civil society groups across Laos? Do you practice participatory, creative, and transformative approaches to Leave No One Behind? Are you driven by the principle of Nothing About Us Without Us (or NOW-Us)? And, most importantly, do you promote inclusive innovation to catalyse transformative change?

If you and your organisation said YES to any of the questions above, Voice is looking for you!

What are we looking for?

We are seeking a platform to facilitate the launch of the Nothing About Us Without Us! or NOW-Us! Awards in Laos, an inclusive innovation award in July or August of 2021 and 2022. Therefore, Voice is looking to award an Innovate and Learn grant spanning 24 months with a maximum budget of €200,000.

In general, Voice supports the following rightsholder groups:

• People with disabilities
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex People
• Women facing exploitation, abuse, and/or violence
• The elderly/senior citizens and young people
• Indigenous people and ethnic minorities

The successful network, consortium or organisation will support Voice to:

• Work with the Voice Laos country team to identify 10 organisations or initiatives from the Voice rightsholder groups in Laos. These ten organisations are already implementing amazing inclusive innovations for their own empowerment or influencing practices;
• Organise and facilitate a participatory 5-day inclusive innovation bootcamp for the 10 organisations or movements to reflect, refine, and ideate the next steps for their initiative;
• Organise the award ceremony, preferably as a component of a larger event or celebration where different civil society members and stakeholders gather;
• Support and mentor the winners in their inclusion innovation journey, including their participation in the Innovation Festival in the Netherlands;
• Amplify and promote the NOW-Us! Awards to influence national conversations on diversity and inclusion;

Celebrating Inclusion’s key objective is to bring rightsholder voices together and, through an Award, highlight unsung efforts to take us one step closer to a responsive and inclusive society.

Who do we wish to fund?

For this Call for Proposals, applications are only being accepted from organisations registered and based in Laos. For (social) enterprises that are interested in applying it needs to be made clear that any profit is reinvested into the project. The organisation and its members should have extensive work experience and networks with the Voice rightsholder groups.

What we won’t fund

1. Organisations with an annual turnover of over €2 million.
2. Funding of commercial services, investment or other commercial activities
3. Projects led by current strategic partners of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation are not eligible for this call. In particular, those organisations funded under the “Dialogue and Dissent 2016-2020”and/or “Power of Voices 2021-2024” Policy Frameworks.

What do we mean by…?

Inclusion – It is related to attitude, communication, accessibility & participation. It can be understood as a set of linked,

1. unending processes to do with the participation of individuals: the creation of settings,
2. systems (procedures, policies, and laws) that encourage participation; and
3. with putting ‘inclusive’ values into action.

All three are about everyone rather than about a particular group. More on Inclusion can be found here.

Innovativeness – Innovative approaches are sought in all key components of Voice. Being innovative means not only creating new ways of working but also creating spaces for improvement in every step of the implementation of Voice, which can entail different steps in different contexts. This implies flexibility, to allow for the implementation of new ideas. For instance, reaching out to groups that have never been reached before requires creativity and flexibility to respond to new ideas.

This Call for Proposals is closed and no longer accepting applications. Come back here at a later stage to learn about the grantees that have been selected in this Call for Proposals.

The current open Calls for Proposals can be found here.