Are you a global or regional coalition or network that is led by one of Voice’s target groups?

Do you see sudden and unanticipated opportunities where you want to stand in solidarity with marginalised people to influence global, regional and national decision-makers? Do you want to promote more inclusion of groups and communities so far excluded?

Are you worried about new threats that could limit the full enjoyment of your human rights or lead to even more discrimination and exclusion of marginalised and discriminated communities?

If you answered “yes” to the questions above, then consider applying to this Call for Proposals. We want to support your actions NOW!

What are we looking for?

For formal or loosely formed coalitions of civil society organisations to quickly get together and coordinate actions to either avoid missing those unique special opportunities to make quick gains on the fight for inclusion or -on the contrary- move from fear to action, transforming challenges into opportunities.

Through this Call for Proposals, Voice aims to support projects that can facilitate the rapid coordination of collective (inter-)action at the national and regional level (campaigns, peaceful demonstrations, strategic litigation, etc.) to:

• Take advantage of those unexpected opportunities to advocate for the inclusion of marginalised and discriminated people and can lead to important positive changes in laws or in public attitudes and social norms.
• Address urgent emerging threats that could further jeopardise and limit the basic human rights groups already marginalised and discriminated against.

Projects that focus on the interaction between national and regional/global influencing efforts are of particular interest to Voice. We invite applicants to be creative… think globally, act locally!

Need more ideas or inspiration? Check out how current Sudden Opportunity grantees are opening up safe spaces to talk about human trafficking based on human rights at the UN level, ensuring that stateless communities’ voices are being heard by decision makers at regional and national levels in East Africa, or to bring to the local level decisions from regional bodies such as the African Court of Human Rights when it comes to land rights. We invite you to look at the other type of projects that Voice currently funds -or has funded in the past- through our Grantee page.

The grant is available from €5.000 to € 200.000 for a minimum duration of 6 months to a maximum of 12 months.

Priority is given to applications that work on, for and/or with the following rightsholder groups:

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

Voice has a strong preference for projects that are designed from an intersectional point of view. This means the sudden opportunity impacts more than one target group and/or you intend to work with more than one of the target groups to address overlapping vulnerabilities. For example, young women and girls living with disabilities face triple exclusion at the same time (age, gender, and impairment).

We also look forward to working with under-represented groups, such as for example LGBTI people in West Africa. For more information Voice strategic and programmatic priorities, we highly recommend you to make use of our Global (and Country-specific) Context Analyses and our Annual Report 2017.

Your project can look at least at one or more 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, and
• Open up spaces for political participation and promote citizen engagement

In terms of geographical focus, projects can be implemented in any country in West Africa, East Africa and/or Asia (considered least developed, low income countries, and/or lower middle-income range AND in at least one Voice focus country in any of the following regions:

• West Africa (Nigeria, Niger, and Mali)
• East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania)
• Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, and Indonesia)

THIS MEANS THAT YOU NEED TO IMPLEMENT IN AT LEAST TWO COUNTRIES OF WHICH AT LEAST ONE COUNTRY NEEDS TO BE A VOICE FOCUS COUNTRY.

Who do we wish to fund?

The (lead) applicant must be rightsholder group-led. What does this mean? An organisation (formal/informal) is group-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 groups are fully involved in the conceptualisation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the project.

Additionally, the (lead) applicant must be registered in at least one of the countries in the region where their project will be implemented with an operational local bank account in the applicant’s name. For example: For a project in West Africa, the (lead) applicant needs to be registered in either Niger, Mali, Nigeria or another neighbouring country in West Africa.

The only exception is if the grant cannot be led by an organisation based in the countries due to the nature of the proposed project presenting additional security or safety risks. In this case, Voice allows an application led by a rightsholder group-led organisation in a third country (preferably in a neighbouring country in the region where the project will be implemented). Obviously, the majority of the activities still need to be implemented in close collaboration with local groups in the Voice focus countries, taking security and safety into account.

What we won’t fund:

• Funding of commercial services, investment or other commercial activities.
• Projects involving only one country or projects that do not involve at least one of the Voice focus countries.
• Networks, coalitions or consortia led by applicants with an annual turnover of over €2 million and without a presence in any of the Voice 10 focus countries in Africa or Asia.
• Project proposals led by international civil society organisations (INGOs). These can only be as co-applicants and technical advisors for Voice-funded projects, and allow their partners working at the local level to develop their own capacities. In case international civil society organisations are interested in applying, they must allow their local partners (in a consortium) to take the lead in the design, management, implementation and evaluation of the project.

For an overview of these countries please click here.

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.