This Call for Proposals is only open for current or past global (multi-country) Voice grantees

 What are we looking to fund under this special Call for Proposals?

Through the first global Influencing Call for Proposals called Our Turn to Talk, Voice supported rightsholder-led regional organisations in directly influencing regional bodies and international mechanisms. With “It’s Still Our Turn to Talk” Voice offers an opportunity to build on the successes of on-going and/or past projects, focusing on deepening advocacy and influencing for the inclusion of the Voice rightsholder groups, namely:

• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex people
• Vulnerable senior citizens/Elderly and Young People
• People with disabilities
• Indigenous groups and/or ethnic minorities
• Women facing exploitation, abuse and/or violence

Intersectionality is at the very heart of Voice. Therefore, we have a strong preference for selecting projects that intend to work with more than one of the Voice rightsholder groups to address overlapping or cross-cutting challenges and promote inter- and/or intra-group solidarity.

In terms of geographical focus, projects are expected to be implemented in the same region as your current/past project, including in at least one Voice focus country:

• East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and/or Uganda)
• West Africa (Nigeria, Niger, and/or Mali)
• South East Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and/or the Philippines)

(Note: Project across regions continue to not be eligible).  Projects need to continue in the region where they were implemented. While there is some flexibility in countries beyond the Voice focus countries mentioned above, you cannot move regions.

Your project can look at any or all of the following impact themes:

• Improved access to productive resources (finance, land, and water) and employment
• Improved access to social services (health and education, in particular)
• Space for political participation and citizen engagement

We are seeking to fund projects that focus on advocacy and influencing at the global and/or regional level. We are particularly interested in:

• Projects that focus on the interaction between national and regional/global influencing efforts. We invite applicants to think globally, while acting locally! This could mean: creating opportunities to amplify the messages of groups who are often unheard, enable grassroots organisations to participate in global conversations by themselves, and/or opening spaces for dialogue where duty-bearers go meet rightsholders in their own context.
• Continue supporting ambitious grantees who are motivated to aim for the stars in promoting  inclusion, yet able to remain humble and down-to-earth! Therefore, grantees who have demonstrated the following will be prioritised:
  • constant commitment to self-reflection and improvement; 
  • sincerity to identify shortcomings; 
  • resilience to learn from their own failures; 
  • and succeed by quickly adapting to an ever-changing world.
• How a project’s activities and strategies are designed to combine physical and online forms of influencing. COVID-19 has forever changed our lives but we will overcome this pandemic sooner or later. While the world is still looking for ways to halt the spread of the virus, uncertainty will remain. Therefore, your proposal needs to reflect how you would adapt to an unpredictable global context, where: face-to-face engagement would have to be done following stricter health safety measures, international and local travel can be limited at any time, meetings with duty bearers and/or communities could be switched online at the very last minute, and the internet (i.e. websites, social media, webinars, etc.) is increasingly becoming the main tool for influencing. We are interested to support our grantees in exploring new ways of working and addressing connectivity obstacles to ensure communities everywhere can participate meaningfully. No one should be left behind!

Funding requests can range from € 25.000 up to € 400.000 and up to 33 months in duration. Projects are expected to start by the 1^st of April of 2021, and to be finalised before the 31^st of December of 2023.

For more information about Voice strategic and programmatic priorities, we highly recommend you to explore our recently updated Global (and Country-specific) Context Analyses, and our last Annual Report 2019 – VOICE(S) UNTAMED. If you need more inspiration to develop your ideas, you can look at the type of projects that Voice currently funds – or has funded in the past – through our Grantee page, and filter by “Multi-Country” grants.

Eligibility Criteria

• Voice will only accept applications from any current and/or previous global grantee. This means the Grant Agreements have been directly managed by the Voice Global Coordination team, based in The Hague, Netherlands.
• Existing grantees can only apply with a project that will start after their current Voice-funded project ends. Voice can only have one contract at a time with a (lead) organisation.
• We will prioritise applications from organisations that are rightsholder-led. What does this mean? An organisation (formal/informal) is rightsholder-led when it is governed and managed by members of the rightsholder-group(s). The principle of “Nothing About Us Without Us” guides their work. If the rightsholders do not play roles in the governance and management of the organisation, the proposal needs to describe how the rightsholder groups are fully involved in the conceptualisation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the project.
• We will only accept applications from those organisation (or lead applicant if you are applying in consortia) that are  registered and operate in either Africa or Asia and at least one of the consortia members operates in at least one but preferably more of the 10 Voice focus countries listed above.
• The applicant or the lead party (if the application is made by a consortium or on behalf of a network) must be a legally registered not-for-profit civil society organisation with an operational bank account in the applicant’s name.
• Funding requests cannot exceed the 50% annual income of the applicant organisation (or the lead applicant, in case of project consortia).
  • The way to calculate this is to divide the requested amount by number of years the project will be implemented. The result will then be divided by the annual income.
  • If the result of this calculation is over 50% you can either reduce the requested amount or team up as part of a consortium where you can add up the annual incomes.

Who cannot participate in this Call?

• Organisations who have never been awarded a Voice global or multi-country grant.
• 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.
• Organisations with an annual turnover of over €2 million based on income figures of 2019.

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.