Available to Target-led Organisations based in Africa and/or Asia

Are you an organisation that is led by one of Voice’s target groups? Do you see an opportunity to guide or influence global and/or regional bodies so that they are more open and receptive to the needs and interests of your target group?  Do you want to inspire attitudinal and policy change amongst people and governments in your region towards your target group? Do you want to try innovative and new ways to influence globally and/or regionally?

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

What do we wish to fund?

This Call for Proposals will help Voice meet its objectives and incorporates feedback received from a consultation with key stakeholders. Voice will fund projects that focus on the following target groups:

• Women facing exploitation, abuse and/or violence
• People with Disabilities
• Age-discriminated (youth and elderly)
• Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people
• Indigenous People and Ethnic Minorities.

Often the most marginalised and discriminated are those who may be vulnerable due to multiple reasons. Therefore, Voice has a strong preference for projects that intend to work with more than one target group to address overlapping vulnerabilities.

Your project can look at any or all of the following 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

We are seeking projects that are multi-country or regional, NOT national. This may mean that your project focuses on influencing political bodies (such as the African Union, ASEAN and the East Africa Community) or specialised regional institutions and forums (such as the Africa Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) and the Eastern Partnership Framework).  Your project could also interact with mechanisms designed to enable influence and advocacy of vulnerable groups such as the
African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the reporting mechanisms of various treaties (for example; the Universal Periodic Review, National Reviews of the Sustainable Development Goals, Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and others.) Proposals that focus on the interaction between national and regional influencing are of particular interest to Voice.

Your grant can be from €25,000 to €500,000 and up to 36 months in duration.

For Voice, Innovation means anything that has not been tried before in a particular context, prioritising human-centred methodologies and approaches. If you have a new idea, method or approach, you are welcome to propose it in your application. Innovation also means using tried and tested influencing methods but for new purposes and with new target groups, audiences and themes.

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.

Applications are only being accepted where the organisation (or lead applicant if you are applying in consortia) is registered in either Africa or Asia and at least one of the consortia members operates in at least one, but preferably more, of the ten Voice focus countries.[1]

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 or community-based organisation with an operational bank account in the applicant’s name.

The (lead) applicant must be target-led. This means that the target group that the organisation purports to represent governs and manages the organisation and the principle of Nothing About Us Without Us guides the work.

What we won’t fund:

• Consortium Partners of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation “Dialogue and Dissent” Strategic Partnership.[2]
• Organisations with a maximum annual turnover of over €2 million.
• An application where the grants awarded from Voice are more than 30% for of the total annual income of the applicant organisation. The way to calculate this is to divide the requested amount by the annual income plus the requested amount in your application. If the result of this calculation is over 30% you can either reduce the requested amount or team up as part of a consortium where you can add up the budgets
• Funding of commercial services, investment or other commercial activities.

Please take our eligibility test below to make sure that you qualify for the grant.

[1] Voice targets the most marginalised and discriminated groups in Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Indonesia, Philippines, Laos and Cambodia

[2] For a full listing of Consortium Partners of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation “Dialogue and Dissent” Strategic Partnership, please go here.

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.

At this moment, we do not know if and when we will have future Calls for Proposals at a global or multi-country level. At national level 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.