Category 1 Seed Grants

Issuance date:         May 19, 2023
Closing date:           June 30, 2023
Project duration:     Multi-year
Award amount:        Year 1: USD 25,000 / Year 2: USD 25,000

Category 2 Growth Grants

Issuance date:         May 18, 2023
Closing date:           June 30, 2023
Project duration:     Multi-year
Award amount:        Year 1: USD 50,000 / Year 2: USD 50,000 

Eligible countries

Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe

Background

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• About the Regional SRHR Fund

  The Regional Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) Fund is a regional funding mechanism that was set up in 2010 by Hivos Southern Africa and Ford Foundation to strengthen SRHR work in the region. The Fund was established in recognition of the critical need for a strategic regional response to collectively address the myriad of SRHR issues in Southern Africa with particular attention to young people and adolescents as well as to provide an opportunity for donors to coordinate their support to SRHR in the region. The Fund secured additional funding from Sida to continue and expand the breadth and focus from the first phase.

  The Fund will focus on strengthening and empowering youth-led and youth-focused organizations to increasingly defend and promote their SRHR. Engage and influence duty bearers to increasingly design, adopt and implement laws and practices that promote the SRHR of adolescents and young people and finally to strengthen and empower youth researchers to generate evidence on SRHR in the East and Southern Africa region.

  The Fund will in the next four years build stronger, more diverse and better-coordinated youth-led civil society organizations to be able to demand and promote access to inclusive and affirmed SRHR information and services for adolescents and young people.

  The Regional SRHR Fund will expand SRHR work at the regional level by convening and supporting the convening of spaces for collaboration of regional partners aimed at collaborative advocacy, youth-led action research, knowledge exchange of strategies, best practices and lessons learned and movement building to move the ASRHR agenda forward. These processes will leverage on and strengthen cross-country collaboration and regional engagements.

  The Regional SRHR Fund key activities will include: sub-granting, coordination of key actors, convening of meetings, capacity building and gathering and sharing information on advocacy and related SRHR issues to strengthen the efforts of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) working on SRHR in the East and Southern Africa region. Youth participation and youth leadership is viewed as a core component of the program as well as a cross-cutting issue that is linked to building a cadre of youths who can be leaders of CSOs, research, policy and issues-based advocates and legitimate frontrunners for adolescent and youth ASRHR concerns within the broader regional SRHR agenda.

Organizational development support

The Regional SRHR Fund will support a number of youth-led/youth-focused organizations per year and work through Organizational Development Specialists dedicated to each organization over the project period to achieve their transformation goals and build robust and well-functioning youth-led and/or youth-focused organizations. Organizational Development Specialists will support youth-led organizations in the areas of:

• Organizational values, vision and mission
• Governance and organizational organograms
• Program management expertise
• Financial Management Systems (FMS) and procedures
• Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and procedures
• Organizational policies and procedures
• Fundraising/donor mapping and proposals writing
• Experience of working on ASRHR programs
• Advocacy on ASRHR and related human rights issues
• Ethics and values of working within the ASRHR sector

Proposal focus

Capacity strengthening is needed to facilitate genuine youth participation and leadership, to enable youth to gather and control the knowledge about their SRHR needs and issues as well as to build the foundation for a cadre of youth-led/youth-focused organizations that can sustain their efforts over a longer period of time.

The grants are aimed at supporting capacity strengthening and organizational development of youth led/youth-focused organizations. The grants will be undertaken through an accompaniment model where grantees will be graduated from one level to the next of the grant, based on the attainment of a particular score on their capacity development plans.

To achieve this, the Fund will support organizational capacity strengthening to the selected youth-led/youth focused organizations over the lifetime of the program. This will include organizational development support, leadership trainings, mentorship and accompaniment including exchange visits across the portfolios to learn best practices. The capacity strengthening grants will ensure national and regional specific stronger voices, inclusion and representation of adolescents and youths. These grants will also enable organizations to undertake work on adolescent and youth SRHR and ensure full participation at all levels of decision making. Furthermore, the grant will support coordination, collaboration and learning among youth-led organizations and groups to promote movement building, learning and mutual accountability through program reflection and linking and learning processes.

Successful organizations will receive comprehensive capacity strengthening for their organizations, and multi-year grants of up to USD 50,000 (Year 1: USD 25,000 and Year 2: USD 25,000) for seed grants and $100,000 (Year 1: USD 50,000 and Year 2: USD 50,000) for growth grants. Second year grants will be based on performance for renewal.

Project funds will be provided to selected youth-led/youth focused organizations to undertake innovative projects at national level to address the key challenges that young people and adolescents face in accessing sexual and reproductive health and services.

The proposal should present an innovative approach and activities to ensure youth-led organizations have the technical expertise and capacity to deliver quality, comprehensive SRHR activities/services. The proposed proposals therefore should focus on the following:

• Increased coordination of youth-led organizations by collaborating with other youth-led organizations, government structures and other youth-focused organizations.
• Increased representation, participation & visibility of youth-led organizations at national levels within the East and Southern Africa region.
• Improved youth leadership at organization and civic policy spaces by facilitating representation and participation of adolescents and young people at national and regional policy formulation spaces.
• Increased support and funding of youth-led organizations by mobilising resources through other available opportunities.
• Enabling political and legislative environment for youth’s participation in national and regional policy formulation.

Expected results

• Increased coordination of youth-led organizations.
• Increased representation, participation and visibility of youth led organisations at national and regional policy formulation spaces.
• Increased youth leadership at organization and civic policy spaces.
• Increased support and funding of youth-led organizations.

Preference will be given to

• Youth-led organizations led by a youth aged 35 years and younger working on SRHR in the focus countries (organizations with a regional focus are welcome to apply).
• Youth-led organizations with clear value statements on diversity, inclusion and full SRHR rights for all.
• Young female-led and youth-led/focused organizations valuing feminist approaches to SRHR.
• Youth-led organizations reaching the poorest or most vulnerable adolescent and youth population to increase their access to SRHR.
• Youth-led organizations with a key focus on breaking down barriers/ challenge social and gender norms around adolescent and youth SRHR.
• Youth-led organizations with clearly identified gaps for organisational development and a willingness to improve on such gaps.
•  Proposals that factor in the linkage between SRHR and environmental matters such as climate change will be highly considered.

Additional information

• The organization should be able to demonstrate an understanding of SRHR in the region and the connection to young people and adolescents.
• Submission of a proposal does not automatically guarantee funding.
• Proposals that are well thought out and demonstrate an innovative clear connection to the objectives of the Regional SRHR Fund and the call for proposal.
• Proposals that articulate an innovative approach to working with key change makers and authorities that have power to bring about change.
• Proposals that have the potential to realize meaningful youth participation in the ASRHR agenda in East and Southern Africa.
• Proposals that demonstrate knowledge on related advocacy work being done in the same environment and provide justification on how the Regional SRHR Fund will complement it.
• Proposals must demonstrate how the initiative will empower marginalized groups to advocate for their rights and access to services.

Templates

Click on the links for:

Proposal template
Budget template

Submission of proposals

Please submit your application via email with the subject line Regional SRHR Fund- YRA Proposal to proposals.hubsaf@hivos.org  by 5pm (CAT) on Friday 30 June, 2023.

Should you not hear from us in 2 months after submission closing date please consider your application unsuccessful.

Hivos reserves the right to withdraw this call of application at any time