Call for Applications: EaP Civil Society Fellowships Programme 2025

Deadline: 30-Dec-2024

The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Facility Project is pleased to announce the Call for Applications for its EU-funded Fellowship programme!

Objectives

• The main objective of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellowships is to support civil society activists or civically minded women and men who demonstrate a deep commitment to leading positive social change in their communities (including IT experts such as software engineers, data scientists, designers who innovate at the intersection of technology and the needs of their communities).
• The Fellowships will build the Fellows’ capacity to constructively engage with communities and authorities and contribute to reforms in the EaP countries.

Themes

• The Fellowships should be linked to the priority themes of the EaP1 and areas of particular challenging nature in the region:
  • Having a resilient, sustainable and integrated economy
  • Strengthening accountability, rule of law, and security
  • Ensuring environmental and climate resilience
  • Contributing to resilient and inclusive digitalization
  • Promoting participatory decision-making and social justice

Types of Fellowship

• There are two different types of Fellowship which make up the programme in this phase.
  • Community Engagement Fellowships
    • Community Engagement Fellowships are designed to support Fellows engaging in one or more of the following activities:
      • Collecting local evidence: supporting fellows to collect and analyse evidence on key issues of public service delivery at local and national level.
      • Involvement in policymaking: allowing fellows to gain expertise on specific policy issues, draft policy paper/recommendations and organise advocacy campaigns; helping fellows get access to government channels in order to better get their ideas across.
      • Capacity development: supporting mentoring and job shadowing schemes and involving fellows in training of trainers in order to train other members of their organisations, as well as members of other CSOs from relevant networks. This may also include, although not exclusively, job shadowing or study visits with CSOs in EU Member States
      • Involvement in monitoring public administration activity and results: supporting fellows in developing a multitude of monitoring activities, including on technical issues such as public financial management, budget transparency and oversight.
      • Improvement of CSO accountability and link to constituencies: supporting fellows in improving the transparency and accountability mechanisms of their organisations and in better linking activities to citizens’ needs.
      • Cooperation between CSOs: allowing fellows to organise activities bringing various CSOs together on issues of common interest.
  • Civic Digital Fellowships 
    • The Civic Digital Fellowships will facilitate Fellows to use their expertise to contribute to, develop or further promote and raise awareness about technological solutions for community needs. These Fellowships are designed to support Fellows engaging in one or more of the following activities:
      • Advocacy campaigns on issues such as open data, data quality, e-services for citizens, and budgetary transparency
      • Improving the quality of data (such as making existing public data machine-readable or generating and publishing open and reusable data needed for further development of digital solutions for transparency and accountability in the region).
      • Developing new digital solutions addressing community needs, helping citizens better hold governments to account, contributing to the improvement of public services, and/or improving CSO accountability.
      • Promoting/rolling out and expanding the existing civic tech solutions that address community needs, help citizens better hold governments to account, contribute to the improvement of public services and/or CSO accountability, and building the relevant skills of the potential users.

Project Activities

• The Fellowship programme will provide support in broad areas of project activities, including:
  • Evidence-based research or monitoring of how public services are delivered at national/local/community level;
  • Using evidence to draft policy papers and recommendations for decision-makers;
  • Advocacy campaigns on issues of public concern;
  • Better tailoring civil society organisations’ activities to citizens’ needs;
  • Developing new solutions on issues such as e-transparency and e-participation, and expanding or upgrading existing technological solutions for community needs;
  • Developing technological products to contribute to a community’s mitigation of climate change or addressing other needs, such as those of IDPs and refugees in a community;
  • Promoting constructive dialogue and bringing civil society and authorities together to develop common solutions, and to improve access to government channels by civil society;
  • Strengthening organisations’ capacity to act effectively, including training of trainers in order to train other members of their organization, as well as members of other CSOs;
  • Supporting mentoring and job shadowing schemes in order to build capacities that can be transferred to other members of the organisation.

Funding Information

• An average of 5,000 EUR to cover the costs of a fellowship project

Benefits

• Benefits of being a Civil Society Fellow:
  • Coaching on project management, communication skills, and other technical topics
  • Opportunities to join international events and advanced learning courses
  • Participating in activities of an international alumni of Fellows
  • The prestige of being an EU Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellow

Geographic Focus

• This Call for Civil Society Fellows is open to all citizens of the Eastern Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) regardless of their current location.

Eligibility Criteria

• In order to be eligible for a fellowship the applicant must:
  • be a natural person and not a legal entity;
  • be above 18 years old;
  • not previously have benefited from the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellowship programme;
  • have a proven track record of:
  • for community engagement fellowships, working (including by volunteering) either in a civil society organisation, including Trade Unions, cooperatives, or professional associations, or with a civic engagement group or initiative group and/or taking a leading role in his/her community by advancing issues related to public service delivery and accountability, and developing local capacities;
  • for civic digital fellowships, professionally contributing to the development of IT solutions and/or voluntarily developing innovative digital products.

Ineligibility Criteria

• The following types of action are ineligible:
  • actions concerned solely or mainly with construction, procurement of works or supplies;
  • actions supporting political parties or candidates;
  • actions supporting the army or other military bodies;
  • actions including proselytism (i.e., attempt of any religion or religious individuals to convert people to their beliefs);
  • activities that are normally carried out by the applicant and/or affiliated entities as part of their usual work.

For more information, visit EaP Civil Society.