Apply for Community Resilience and Child Rights Support (Gambia)

Deadline: 12-Sep-26

The UNICEF initiative in The Gambia seeks to engage faith-based organizations and religious leaders to protect children’s rights, strengthen community resilience, and promote peaceful civic participation during the country’s electoral period. With an indicative budget of US$32,540.63, the initiative will address misinformation, disinformation, online hate speech, conflict risks, and other threats affecting children and families.

About the UNICEF Initiative

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is seeking qualified faith-based organizations (FBOs) and national networks of religious leaders in The Gambia to support child-focused advocacy and community resilience during the upcoming presidential and national assembly elections.

Election periods can create heightened risks for children and families. Increased political competition, youth mobilisation, misinformation, online abuse, and potential violence can contribute to exploitation, psychosocial distress, disruption of essential services, and other child protection concerns.

The initiative seeks to ensure that children’s rights remain part of political dialogue and public decision-making before, during, and after the elections.

Key Objectives

The initiative will use religious leaders and faith-based networks as trusted community channels to promote accurate information, peaceful engagement, and child-sensitive political discourse.

Key objectives include:

• Promoting tolerance, peace, and non-violence during the electoral period.
• Countering misinformation and disinformation affecting children and families.
• Addressing online hate speech and harmful digital narratives.
• Promoting accurate and responsible information through trusted religious networks.
• Keeping children’s rights on the political agenda.
• Encouraging political parties to address children’s needs in their policies and manifestos.
• Strengthening community resilience against conflict and harmful online content.
• Supporting religious leaders to become effective communicators and digital content creators.

Priority Child Rights Issues

The initiative will encourage public and political discussion around issues that directly affect children and families, including:

• Education and access to learning.
• Child health and healthcare services.
• Child protection and prevention of violence.
• Nutrition and food security.
• Social inclusion.
• Psychosocial well-being.
• Protection from exploitation and harmful online activity.
• Safe and peaceful communities.

What Will the Programme Support?

The selected organization or network is expected to implement activities that combine community engagement, advocacy, digital communication, peacebuilding, and child-rights promotion.

Potential activities include:

• Developing messages promoting tolerance and peaceful elections.
• Producing child-rights advocacy materials.
• Disseminating accurate information through social media.
• Using radio and television to reach wider communities.
• Training religious leaders in digital communication.
• Establishing a network of trained faith leaders.
• Supporting religious leaders to create and distribute digital content.
• Conducting community awareness and engagement activities.
• Countering misinformation and disinformation.
• Addressing online hate speech and harmful narratives.
• Engaging political parties on children’s rights.
• Encouraging political parties to include child-focused commitments in their policies and manifestos.

Who Is Expected to Benefit?

The initiative is designed to strengthen the capacity of key community and political stakeholders while ultimately benefiting children and families across The Gambia.

The programme expects to engage:

• 350 religious leaders.
• 10 political parties.
• Faith-based organizations and religious networks.
• Children and families affected by election-related risks.
• Local communities exposed to misinformation and harmful digital narratives.

Why It Matters

Children can be particularly vulnerable during periods of political instability or heightened social tension. Election-related misinformation, violence, hate speech, and disruption of public services can have direct and indirect consequences for children’s safety and well-being.

Religious leaders can play an important role because they often have established relationships and trusted communication channels within communities.

By equipping faith leaders with accurate information, advocacy tools, and digital communication skills, the initiative seeks to create a community-based child protection and resilience mechanism during the electoral period.

The programme also creates an opportunity to connect child rights, peacebuilding, digital literacy, and democratic participation.

Expected Results

Successful implementation is expected to contribute to several outcomes:

1. Stronger religious leadership networks: Religious leaders will have improved capacity to communicate accurate and child-sensitive information.
2. Improved community resilience: Communities will be better equipped to recognize and respond to misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, and harmful digital narratives.
3. Peaceful civic engagement: Faith leaders will promote tolerance, dialogue, and non-violent participation.
4. Greater visibility of children’s rights: Issues affecting children will receive greater attention during political discussions.
5. Stronger political commitments: Political parties will be encouraged to address children’s rights in policies and election manifestos.
6. Expanded digital outreach: Child-focused messages will reach communities through social media, radio, television, and religious networks.

Funding Available

The initiative has an indicative budget of US$32,540.63 available to support implementation.

The funding is intended to support activities necessary to achieve the initiative’s objectives, including community engagement, advocacy, communications, training, and dissemination activities.

Applicants should ensure that proposed budgets are realistic, justified, and directly connected to the expected results.

Who Is Eligible?

The opportunity is intended for faith-based organizations and national networks of religious leaders in The Gambia with the capacity to implement community-focused activities.

Potential applicants should be able to demonstrate:

• Experience working with religious or community networks.
• Strong community outreach capacity.
• Ability to mobilize religious leaders.
• Experience with advocacy or awareness campaigns.
• Capacity to develop and disseminate communications content.
• Understanding of child rights and protection issues.
• Ability to address misinformation and harmful digital content.
• Capacity to work with political and community stakeholders.
• Appropriate financial and administrative management systems.
• Ability to implement activities during the electoral period.

Organizations should carefully review the official call for any additional registration, documentation, partnership, safeguarding, and application requirements.

How the Initiative Works

The proposed approach can be understood through five interconnected components.

1. Engage Religious Leaders

The implementing organization will mobilize religious leaders and establish or strengthen networks capable of reaching communities across The Gambia.

2. Build Communication Capacity

Religious leaders will receive support to understand misinformation, disinformation, online hate speech, and other harmful digital narratives.

Training may also help participants develop accurate, responsible, and child-sensitive digital content.

3. Develop Advocacy Messages

The programme will create messages focused on:

• Peaceful elections.
• Tolerance.
• Non-violence.
• Child protection.
• Children’s health and education.
• Social inclusion.
• Responsible digital engagement.

4. Reach Communities Through Multiple Channels

Messages can be disseminated through:

• Social media.
• Radio.
• Television.
• Religious networks.
• Community engagement activities.
• Digital content created by trained faith leaders.

5. Engage Political Parties

The initiative will engage political parties to encourage the inclusion of children’s rights and child-focused priorities in political policies, commitments, and manifestos.

How to Prepare a Strong Application

Organizations preparing an application should clearly demonstrate how their proposed approach will achieve measurable results.

A strong proposal should explain:

1. The problem: Describe the risks children and families face during the electoral period.
2. Target groups: Clearly identify the religious leaders, communities, political stakeholders, and other groups that will be engaged.
3. Activities: Explain the proposed training, advocacy, communication, and community activities.
4. Communication strategy: Show how messages will reach communities through social media, radio, television, and other channels.
5. Child-rights approach: Demonstrate how children’s rights will remain central to the intervention.
6. Misinformation response: Explain how the project will address misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, and harmful narratives.
7. Political engagement: Describe how political parties will be encouraged to prioritize children.
8. Monitoring: Define measurable outputs and outcomes.
9. Budget: Provide a realistic budget linked directly to planned activities.
10. Safeguarding: Demonstrate appropriate measures for protecting children and vulnerable community members.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Applicants should avoid:

• Proposing activities unrelated to children’s rights or electoral-period resilience.
• Focusing only on general religious activities without a clear child-protection component.
• Providing vague plans for reaching religious leaders or communities.
• Underestimating the risks associated with misinformation and online hate speech.
• Failing to explain how advocacy messages will reach political parties.
• Including activities without measurable outputs.
• Preparing budgets that are not clearly connected to project activities.
• Ignoring safeguarding and responsible communication requirements.
• Treating social media outreach as a standalone activity without a broader community engagement strategy.

Key Facts at a Glance

• Programme: UNICEF Faith-Based Organizations and Religious Leaders Initiative
• Country: The Gambia
• Focus: Child rights, electoral resilience, peacebuilding, misinformation, digital safety and civic engagement
• Target stakeholders: Faith-based organizations, religious leaders and political parties
• Religious leaders targeted: 350
• Political parties targeted: 10
• Indicative budget: US$32,540.63
• Key channels: Social media, radio, television and community networks
• Main themes: Children’s rights, peaceful elections, tolerance, accurate information and community resilience

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the UNICEF initiative in The Gambia intended for?

The initiative is intended for faith-based organizations and national networks of religious leaders in The Gambia that can support child-rights advocacy, community resilience, peaceful civic engagement, and accurate information during the electoral period.

How much funding is available?

The indicative budget available for the initiative is US$32,540.63.

How many religious leaders will the programme target?

The initiative expects to strengthen the capacity of approximately 350 religious leaders to help communities respond to misinformation, disinformation, online hate speech, and harmful digital narratives.

Will political parties be involved?

Yes. The initiative expects to engage 10 political parties and encourage them to prioritize children’s rights in their policies, political commitments, and manifestos.

What issues affecting children will the programme address?

The initiative will promote attention to children’s education, health, protection from violence, nutrition, social inclusion, psychosocial well-being, and other issues affecting children and families.

What communication channels can be used?

The programme emphasizes multiple communication channels, including social media, radio, television, and community-based religious networks. Trained faith leaders are also expected to contribute to digital content creation and dissemination.

Why are religious leaders important to the programme?

Religious leaders can serve as trusted community voices. Their networks can help communicate accurate information, promote tolerance and non-violence, counter harmful narratives, and bring children’s rights into community and political discussions.

Conclusion

The UNICEF initiative provides an opportunity for faith-based organizations and religious networks in The Gambia to play a strategic role in protecting children’s rights during the electoral period. With an indicative budget of US$32,540.63, the programme combines religious leadership, child-rights advocacy, digital communication, misinformation response, peacebuilding, and political engagement.

Organizations seeking to participate should focus their proposals on practical, measurable activities that strengthen religious leaders, improve community resilience, promote accurate information, and ensure that children’s health, education, protection, nutrition, and social inclusion remain central to electoral and political dialogue.

For more information, visit UN Partner Portal.