Laos Empowerment Accelerated! 

ທຶນຍົກລະດັບຄວາມອາດສາມາດແລະຄວາມເຂັ້ມແຂງຕໍ່ຜູ້ເຄິຍໄດ້ຮັບທຶນ 

For previous Voice Empowerment Grantees only 

Are you a previous Voice Empowerment grantee? 

Do you still see room for growth or continuation of your empowerment journey beyond your recently completed project?  

Do you want to further work on your leadership and/or increase your and community’s confidence to work towards full social inclusion of people impacted by stigma, marginalization, and/or discrimination? 

 If you answered “yes” to the questions above, then consider applying to this Call!  

It is an opportunity to either expand, deepen, challenge or bring yourselves another step further in your own empowerment processes. 

Voice believes that when people are empowered, their self-esteem is higher. When people are happier they will be more eager to come together, to understand (each)other, and to want to share their own lived experiences and lives. We want to support communities to find their own innate strength, raise their voices, and take actions to push for social change and inclusion. 

 The Voice Empowerment Accelerator grants are ‘graduation’ grants meant for rightsholder-led groups to continue and/or strengthen transformative leadership skills, to build (collective and individual) confidence and skills, forge alliances with other like-minded individuals and/or organisations to address cross-cutting obstacles, and work collectively against the exclusion of marginalized and discriminated groups.  

Funding available ranges from €25, 000  to €50, 000 and the lifetime of the projects under this grant should be for at least 18 and maximum 21 months (April 1st, 2022 to December 2023 only). 

What do we wish to fund? 

Proposals with “out of the box” project ideas that promote learning and focus on underrepresented groups within the following Voice rightsholder groups; 

• Age-discriminated vulnerable groups notably the young and elderly. 
• Persons with disabilities. 
• Indigenous groups and/or ethnic minorities. 
• Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people 
• Women facing exploitation, abuse and/or violence 

Voice has a strong preference for projects that are designed from an intersectional point of view. This means projects should aim to address the overlapping vulnerabilities and/or forms of discrimination between two or more of the abovementioned groups. For example, if your project aims to work with persons with disabilities, you might also want to look at the unique experiences of women/youth with disabilities, indigenous elders with disabilities, transgender women with disabilities, and so on. 

All projects MUST focus on at least one or all of the following impact themes: 

• Improved access to (productive) resources such as land, and employment, 

• Improved access to social services, particularly health and education, and 
• Fostering space for political participation and citizen engagement 

Project activities may include, but are not limited to the following;- 

• Build self-confidence of all women (young, old, disabled, indigenous) to change social relationships and the institutions, and to enhance their ability to voice at national and/or county governments accountable; 

• Build, and/or strengthen networks of rightsholder groups to improve their skills, knowledge and self-perception; 
• Raise (self)awareness among the rightsholder groups about their own rights and sharpen-up strategies for demanding them, for example, engaging in advocacy with stakeholders and power brokers who exercise varying degrees of control over the group; 
• Interventions that boost individual and/or groups economic status, such as promote women’s household bargaining power, youth access to employment opportunities, etc.; 
• Strengthening the collective political voice of all women movements to improve access to productive resources such as finance, water and land; 
• Civic education and public awareness campaigns to change attitudes influenced by outdated or discriminatory cultural practices within development programmes and service delivery; 

• Interventions that enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participating in all aspect of life and eliminating obstacles and barriers to accessibility. 

Still in need of more inspiration or ideas? We invite you to take a look at the different Empowerment project supported by Voice via our Grantee page. 

Who do we wish to fund? 

For this call, Voice in Laos will only accept applications from previous Voice empowerment grantees who are 100% rightsholder-led. As always, we encourage rightsholders group / community-based groups to be the lead applicants. However, if you are (still) not registered, you can apply through preferably the same fiscal host as you did for your previous grant.
 

We will also prioritise organisations which are based in their intervention area or close to the communities they are representing/working with. 

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.