MLDI’s Funding and Support for NGOs

The Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI), the UK-based organization which supports initiatives to enhance the legal knowledge, skills and effectiveness of those working in the field has announced a funding opportunity to support NGOs around the world. NGOs working for legal assistance or litigation activities which safeguard or advance media freedom can submit proposals for funding support.

MLDI is working to elp build a strong global legal defence network for independent media and it is makes grants to support organizations and projects delivering legal support to journalists. Currently MLDI funds a small number of organizations based in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Central Europe, Africa and Central and South America. The aim is to expand this network and achieve better local-level access to legal assistance for independent media outlets, journalists and bloggers who lack the financial means to access legal support at commercial rates.

MLDI is open to grant proposals from national organizations to pursue one or both of the following activities:

• Provide legal assistance for independent journalists or media outlets who face legal proceedings because of their work;
• Engage in strategic litigation to bring local law and practice in media cases in line with international standards on freedom of expression.

Priority will be given to proposals that respond to a demonstrated need on the ground, increase the geographical coverage of the Media Legal Defence Initiative and are likely to have a high impact on protecting media freedom.

Grants awarded by MLDI are usually for a 12-month period and range in size between GBP5,000 and GBP25,000.

For more information, visit this link.

Catalytic Fund Call for Proposals: Youth and the City Challenges

The Cities Alliance, a global partnership for urban poverty reduction and the promotion of the role of cities in sustainable development has issued its second call for proposals under its Catalytic Fund.

The theme under which the funding would be provided is “Youth and the City: Challenges of and Visions for Demographic Change.”

The thematic call has three main objectives in line with the ‘catalytic’ nature of the Fund:

• To raise awareness of the role of youth in urban development at a time when cities, grappling with an historic urbanisation process, appear ill-prepared to provide improved governance, meaningful representation, or economic and social roles for their youthful populations.
• To select and support, both technically and financially, innovative youth-focused urban projects and to revisit traditional Cities Alliance areas such as city development strategies, slum upgrading and national policies on urban development with an emphasis on youth.
• To provide a flexible platform for successful projects to develop peer-to-peer learning networks and to systematically extract and share knowledge that both informs and influences urban practices as well as policy dialogues at the local, national and global level.

The proposed project must be implemented in countries that are on the OECD DAC List of Aid Recipients.

Grant size requests must be limited to between US $50,000 – US $250,000.

The deadline for submission is 30 April 2012 at midnight (Washington DC time). For more information, visit this link.

IDB and GDN Grant for Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia Regions

The Inter-American Development Bank and the Global Development Network have announced a grant opportunity to provide support for collaborative research on two themes of global development challenges in the Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia Regions.

Grants averaging $30,000 each will be given for five research studies on Urbanization and Development: Delving Deeper into the Nexus, and to four studies on Macroeconomic Volatility and Regional Fiscal and Monetary Policies in Latin America, Caribbean, Asia and Pacific.

The IDB-GDN Collaborative Research Grant is a competitive research grant to promote and strengthen research and policy links between the Latin America and the Caribbean region and Asia.

It is administered by GDN and funded by the IDB.

The deadline for submission of proposals is April 16, 2012. For more information, visit this link.

Sida Call for proposals: Research Training Partnership Programme

Deadline- May 31st 2012

Countries/Region- Rwanda and Bolivia and Sweden

The call for proposals for Sida funded partnerships between universities in Rwanda and Bolivia and Swedish universities will open soon. This new programme named “Research Training Partnership Programme as an integral part of Institutional research Capacity Strengthening” aims at supporting the strengthening of institutional research training capacity at universities in Sweden’s target countries and regions, contributing to increased number of research graduates.

This first call will be directed at five year collaboration with the following target universities in Bolivia and Rwanda

For more information, visit this link

Sida Call for proposals: Research Training Partnership Programme

Deadline- May 31st 2012

Countries/Region- Rwanda and Bolivia and Sweden

The call for proposals for Sida funded partnerships between universities in Rwanda and Bolivia and Swedish universities will open soon. This new programme named “Research Training Partnership Programme as an integral part of Institutional research Capacity Strengthening” aims at supporting the strengthening of institutional research training capacity at universities in Sweden’s target countries and regions, contributing to increased number of research graduates.
This first call will be directed at five year collaboration with the following target universities in Bolivia and Rwanda

For more information, visit this link