Do you want to try something new and innovative to support your target groups? Have you tested a new approach but have not had time or resources to document, reflect and learn? Do you want to try using artivism (art for activism) to amplify the voices of your target groups? Do you want to scale up and disseminate an innovative approach but with a different target group or geographical area?

If you said yes to any of the questions above, apply for an Innovate and Learn Grant. This is intended for groups, organisations, networks, consortia, start-ups, and social enterprises who wish to ‘Learn, Explore, Test and Scale up’ new approaches. LETS up our game!

Innovate and Learn grants focus on organisations that want to learn from innovation and/or to test and scale new approaches. Voice focuses less on technology but prefers human-centred innovations that are context-specific and relevant to empowering, amplifying and/or influencing the voice of the target groups.

This grant is available for a minimum of €5,000 to a maximum of €200,000. The life of projects under this grant must not exceed 24 months.

What do we wish to fund?

This Call for Proposals is intended for projects that focus on Voice defined themes and target groups.

• Age Discriminated Groups: Youths and Elderly
• Ethnic Minority and Indigenous People
• LGBTI (Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex) group
• Women facing Exploitation, Abuse and Violence (WEAV)
• People with Disability (PWD)

Voice remains committed to the principle of leaving no one behind. Thus, while this call targets WEAV & PWD specifically, applications that are able to demonstrate credible instances of intersectionality with at least one or two other target groups identified above stand better chance, including the youth both as a stand-alone interest and also as a cross cutting component.

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

• Improved access to (productive) resources such as land, extractives and employment,
• Improved access to social services, particularly health and education, and
• Fostering space for political participation and citizen engagement

Actions that this grant will support include but are not limited to:

• Up scaling an intervention/action to expand reach or replicate best practices from community to national level. Voice empowerment grantees for instance can tap into this opportunity to upscale the influencing component of their empowerment activities or to test outcome of their empowerment activities;
• Research with clear outline of how the outcome can address critical social issues in Nigeria;
• Actions that can mobilize Nigerian youths and stimulate within them, innovative ideas and creativity that responds to trending social issues in Nigeria. Here Voice is looking forward to infusion of entertainment and education/sensitization (Edutainment), the application of Sports, Arts, and other creative initiatives towards addressing social problems;
• Create simple but effective ways of challenging cultures of silence especially around violence, abuse, marginalization and discrimination;

Who do we wish to fund?

Applications are only being accepted from locally registered Nigerian organisations as lead applicant including but not limited to social enterprises and/or start-ups. International organisations are not able to be a lead applicant but can team up as a co-applicant in the case of consortium applications.

Only target led applications will be accepted. This means that the lead applicant must have a strong representation from or affinity with the target group it wants to support.

Voice encourages network, partnership and consortia applications because each organisation may bring new ideas to the project and each partner can learn from each other. You may also wish to partner with “unusual suspects” like media companies, campaigners and artists who may encourage new ways of advocacy and influence.

Where do we wish to fund?

Voice Nigeria will only fund projects that intend to work in Abuja and Enugu States. Applicants registered outside these States are nevertheless eligible to apply as far as they have a project base/office in the focal States and can provide the intervention there without undue travel cost on Voice.

What we won’t fund:

• Organisations with an annual turnover of over €2 million.
• Funding of commercial services, investment or other commercial activities.

This call for proposals is closed, so application is no longer possible. Please come back here at a later stage to learn about the grantees that have been selected in this call for proposals.

Calls for proposals for Influencing grants will be opened once a year, while for Empowerment, Innovate and Learn and Sudden Opportunity grants we accept proposals on a rolling basis. The current open calls for proposals can be found here.