In the recent past, visible and invisible power shifts have contributed to political, social, economic and environmental injustices more so among populations in intersecting forms of marginalization.

Through this grant, we are looking for either emerging and/or informal groups who want to work on movement building and organizing, building leadership and/or increasing confidence of their own to challenge and question inequality and injustices witnessed in their community.

Are you an organization led by rightsholders to raise awareness develop transformative leadership, build confidence and skills, strengthen already existing capacities, and work towards claiming their own empowerment process both at the individual and the organizational level?

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

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

Voice believes that when people are empowered, their self-esteem is higher.  We want to support communities to find their own innate strength, raise their voices, and take actions to push for social change and inclusion.

Funding available is a minimum of €5, 000 – €25, 000 and the lifetime of the projects under this grant should be maximum 12 months.

 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;

• People with disabilities
• Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people
• Indigenous People and ethnic minorities
• Vulnerable elderly and youth
• 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 work with more than one of the above groups to address overlapping vulnerabilities and/or forms of discrimination.

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.
• Fostering space for political participation and citizen engagement
• Addressing harmful cultural practices driven largely by socio-economic marginalization.

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

• Build self-confidence and capacity of all women movements (young, old, disabled, indigenous, LBQ women) to push against actors working to roll back and erode the fragile progress that women, girls, and LGBTIQ movements have worked hard to achieve.;
• Build, and/or strengthen networks of marginalised groups to improve their skills, knowledge and self-perception;
• 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 projects supported by Voice via our Grantee page.

Who do we wish to fund?

Small (informal) organisations that are not yet registered should identify a fiscal host from the same area (geographical) of implementation. We are open to cover costs relating to registration in efforts to further strengthen the group/organization.