Japan Water Forum Fund: Grants for Grassroots NGOs

The Japan Water Forum has announced a grant opportunity for grassroots NGOs in developing countries working to resolve water and sanitation problems.

Only projects planned and faithfully implemented to solve the current water and sanitation problems by grass-roots organizations in developing countries will be considered.

• These projects include for example:
• Installation of rainwater-harvesting tanks, ponds or digging wells;
• Development of small scale water supply systems;
• Building new toilets and upgrading existing sanitation facilities;
• Prevention of water-related disasters projects;
• Establishment and encouragement of water-efficient irrigation;
• Solving gender issues on water and sanitation;
• Water environment restoration activities.

Any grassroots organizations in developing countries involved in resolution of water and sanitation problems. National governments, Local governments and private companies will not be selected can apply for this opportunity.

The JWF Fund recommends that your proposed project includes capacity building/awareness-raising programs but it should not be only that. All projects need to be implemented by end of March 2013.

Proposals to be submitted using the given application form. The deadline to submit proposals is 25 July 2012. For more information, visit this link.

WEAmericas Small Grants Program

The United States Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues has announced a new funding opportunity for NGOs in Latin America espeically for countries such as Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

WEAmericas Small Grants Initiative Investing in women-owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is one of the best ways to simultaneously achieve economic, financial, and social impact. Research shows that women-owned SMEs are significant accelerators of economic growth; however, women often experience additional barriers which make it more difficult to start and grow a business then their male counterparts. Therefore at the Summit of the Americas in April 2012, Secretary Hillary Clinton launched the Women’s Entrepreneurship in the Americas (WEAmericas), an initiative which leverages public-private partnerships to increase women’s economic participation and address three key barriers women confront when starting and growing SMEs: access to training and networks, access to markets, and access to finance.

The WEAmericas Small Grants Initiative, which is made possible by Secretary Clinton’s International Fund for Women and Girls and the Walmart Foundation, will support the development of and linkage of existing resources, programs, and infrastructure to create a strong entrepreneurial eco-system, which allows women-owned businesses to thrive in the region. The attached request for applications (RFA) asks nonprofits and social enterprises with offices in Latin America and the Caribbean to submit proposals on how a small grant of (USD $20,000-60,000) would help the organization leverage existing programs, resources, and infrastructure to address at least two barriers women entrepreneurs face when growing and starting businesses. The main barriers are: Access to Skills and Capacity Building, Access to Assets, Access to Markets, Access to Networks, and Women’s Leadership. The ultimate beneficiaries must be women and girls and the project must be designed to support an entrepreneurship ecosystem for women-owned businesses. Applicants should be able to demonstrate previous success in creating or strengthening an entrepreneurial eco-system.

Examples may include: 1) skills and capacity building programs to develop micro and SMEs, 2) strengthening and building women-owned business networks, or 3) creating necessary linkages between micro, SMEs, and large scale buyers taking all components of the value chain into consideration. Special attention will be paid to those organizations which incorporate rural and/or indigenous women-owned businesses into their proposal. See RFA for further details. This is an open grant announcement that can be found on www.grants.gov. All project proposals MUST be submitted in English and may not exceed six (6) pages, excluding Appendices.

All proposals must be submitted by August 20, 2012. For more information, visit this link.

European Commission Call for Proposals: Environment and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources

The European Commission under the Thematic Programme for Environment and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources including Energy (ENRTP) has issued this call for proposals to support civil society efforts in developing countries to address environmental and natural management issues.

The present call will focus on themes that fall under two Priority areas of the Thematic Strategy ENRTP referred to below:

• ENRTP Priority 1: Climate change and sustainable energy
• ENRTP Priority 2: Environment for development

ENRTP Priority 1 / Lot 1: Climate Change mitigation, in particular REDD
The types of actions which are eligible under this lot are the following:

• Actions that support partnerships between civil society and private sector that prevent or reduce deforestation and forest degradation in investments in large scale agricultural commodities.
• Actions that promote independent monitoring by in-country civil society of REDD+ investments and the application of REDD+ safeguards8, based on national best practice where this exists.
• Actions that develop effective links in practice between national FLEGT and REDD+ processes, with regards to stakeholder processes, monitoring, improved governance and law enforcement as well as legal reforms.

ENRTP Priority 2 / Lot 2: Biodiversity
Type of actions eligible for financing include:

• Developing legal, policy and institutional frameworks to enable sustainable financing of parks agencies.
• Developing Public-Private-Partnerships or community-run management plans to ensure the long term financial stability of protected areas and green infrastructures.
• Mobilizing private funding through innovative financial mechanisms by fostering biodiversity entrepreneurship and enabling biodiversity entrepreneurs to experiment, invest and expand creative economic activities such as Payment for Ecosystem Services, markets for green products, business biodiversity partnerships, ecotourism and new forms of charity.
• Developing Access and Benefit-Sharing Policy for Protected Areas to help managers maximise the potential gains from biodiversity research and prospecting.

ENRTP Priority 2 / Lot 3 Forest Governance and FLEGT

Type of actions eligible for financing:

• Implementation of the EU FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade) Action Plan.

The deadline to submit applications is 25 September 2012. For more information, visit this link.

APWLD Call for Proposals: Community Based Participatory Research

• The Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) has issued this call for proposals for the Community Based Participatory Research which is designed to build the capacity of rural, indigenous and migrant (RIM) women’s organizations to be vocal and effective advocates for rights based approaches to development.
• Specifically it aims to build the capacity, resources and strategies of RIM women in nine (9) communities to research and document evidence to support national and international advocacy for change on their priority issues.
• Nine partner organisations will be selected to work with APWLD for one (1) year, starting from July 2012 until 2013, to document:
• Economic, social and cultural rights violations that are illustrative of development needs with a particular focus on one of the following:
• 1.       Right to land and resources
• 2.       Right to decent work and a living wage
• 3.       Right to a democratic voice
• 4.       Right to peace and security
• 5.       Climate change impact and coping mechanisms for women
• APWLD will provide a small grant to employ a young researcher and carry out the research including salary and on-costs; and will support the researcher to participate in capacity building workshops and advocacy or network meetings.
• Eligibility:
• A non-governmental, non-profit organisation which:
• •        Works for the realisation of the human rights of marginalised women at community level in countries in Asia Pacific and are able to commit to the one year documentation process. (excluding major developed countries in the region such as Korea, Japan, Brunei, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, which have different contexts of “development”)
• Is committed to the promotion of human rights of marginalised women, particularly young, women (rural, indigenous, migrant, dalit women and/or women in other minority groups), as well as to the participatory methodologies to increase the democratic participation of those women in the research
• Can provide the appointed researcher with regular internet and computer access for online communication with APWLD secretariat and online training

The deadline to submit proposals is 12 July 2012. For more information, visit this link.