AHA! Small Grants and Capacity Building Programme: Call for Applicantions

Deadline: 20-Oct-20

AHA! Small Grants and Capacity Building Programme have been launched to contribute to the response efforts of the COVID-19 pandemic by preventing conflict and building social cohesion in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and broader South Asia.

The specific objective is to increase outreach for initiatives that promote awareness of COVID-19 and constructive narratives that reduce discrimination, hate speech, and stigmatization against specific communities, primarily targeting religious leaders, and women and youth leaders as community influencers.

This work will focus on motivating critical community influencers, including religious leaders, youth and women leaders to spread factual messages and to promote human solidarity. Peacemakers, including religious and traditional leaders, women, and youth, can act as resilient community actors, potential opinion leaders, and innovative collaborators in addressing the pandemic and responding to the immediate needs of countering misinformation and hate speech.

The initiatives supported by this grant must start in November 2020 and they can be from 4 months to 9 months in length. They can be both new initiatives or developed based on good practices or approaches from previous experience.

The AHA! Small Grants and Capacity Building Programme is implemented by a consortium of partners, including the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers/ Finn Church Aid, World Faiths Development Dialogue, The Center for Peace and Justice – Brac University, Center for Communication and Development of Bangladesh, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Youth Development Foundation and Lanka Jatika Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya. The Project is funded by the European Union and supported also by Asia Muslim Action Network, International Network of Engaged Buddhists, United Network of Young Peacebuilders and KAICIID Dialogue Centre.

Funding Information

Pakistan and Bangladesh: 30 grants will be awarded to individuals for community initiatives in country for minimum value of 2,000 EUR and maximum value of 5,000 EUR
Sri Lanka: 15 grants will be awarded to organizations for community initiatives in country for a minimum value of 3,000 EUR and maximum of 10,000 EUR.
South Asia Regional: Will be awaded to organizations. Minimum value of 2,000 EUR and maximum value of 5,000 EUR.

Components

AHA! Small Grants and Capacity Building Programme consists of three different components:

Awarding of small grants: 50 small grants will be awarded to support community level initiatives in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh and regional level work in South Asia that promote awareness of COVID-19 and constructive narratives that reduce discrimination, hate speech, and stigmatization against specific communities.
Capacity building and collaborative learning: Small grant recipients will participate in a year-long online capacity building and peer-learning process. As part of this capacity building process, they will further benefit from an increase in awareness, knowledge, and understanding on COVID-19, strategies to prevent hate speech and discrimination; improvement in their organizing, outreach, networking, and advocacy capacities; as well as strengthened collaboration at the national and regional levels that will enhance their coordination, communication, and peer-learning.
Strengthened Digital capacity: Applicants can also apply for the capacity building support in strengthening the digital capacity through specialised digital campaigning and Peacetech trainings. From the 50 grantees, 20 will be selected to receive specific digital capacity support. This will include support to set up and train on the use of online meeting platforms such as Zoom, Go-to Meeting, Teams, Slack, and others in order to network and have wider communication possibilities.

Eligible Activities

The types of eligible activities are as follows:

Community level engagement through processes like confidence-building, dialogue, capacity building and initiatives aiming to increase awareness on COVID-19 including factual information and countering the spread of misinformation;
Mechanisms for information sharing and opposition of hate speech, discrimination, and stigmatization, and promote harmony during and after COVID-19 pandemic;
Enhanced participation into decision-making through advocacy towards, and partnerships with, local or national level authorities, health sector, media, as well as other relevant national, regional and international stakeholders on the design and implementation of conflict-sensitive policy frameworks, strategies and action plans to address hate speech, misinformation and discrimination during and after COVID-19 pandemic;
Dialogue and confidence building measures aiming to promote understanding, tolerance and social cohesion across various social, political or religious divides during and after COVID-19 pandemic;
Media and strategic communication actions during and after COVID-19 pandemic aiming to promote media literacy, critical thinking against hate speech and propaganda, tolerance and nonviolence;
Formal and informal peace education actions during and after COVID-19 pandemic targeting communities and aimed at promoting a culture of peace, intercultural dialogue and cooperation, respect for diversity and tolerance, including: cultural diversity, strengthening their skills in mediation, negotiation, conflict resolution, consensus building, positive social norms, integrating relevant and context specific education into teachings

Eligibility Criteria

Community leaders and influencers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka;
Community leaders and influencers regionally who are currently implementing and/or are interested in implementing activities and initiatives focused on reducing hate speech, discrimination, stigmatization related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and promoting social cohesion and peacebuilding;
Traditional leaders, religious leaders, leaders of women and youth groups, Community-Based Organizations, faith councils and associations, local CSOs and networks; or individual (and aspiring) community activists and influencers;
Organizations registered in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or other South Asia countries such as Nepal or India.

Criteria

Small grantees will be selected among the initiatives with the highest potential impact and outreach, timeliness of the effort, the quality of their current and proposed work, and innovative value and added-value elements of their proposed work. The most competitive applications will:

Demonstrate awareness of the issue(s) and community need(s) the initiative will address.
Outline the objectives of the initiative and the corresponding activities.
Outline how achieving the initiative’s objectives will enhance the community level response to the pandemic and prevention of related hate speech, misinformation and discrimination.
Demonstrate a needs-based reach of the action targeting minimum 50 persons (disaggregated by gender).
Describe clearly how the initiative targets women, youth and/or religious leaders/actors.
Propose timeline based on needs and urgency of the action.
Explain how the implementation of the initiative takes into account conflict sensitivity(/do no harm) and inclusivity, particularly gender equality and/or youth participation.
Demonstrate how the activity contributes to longer-term community resilience and social cohesion.
Explain how the planned initiative utilises online communication or other innovative means.
Demonstrate individual or organization’s prior experience and expertise in implementing similar activities and explain any prior experience in managing similar grants.
Provide the total proposed cost of initiative with demonstrate value for money in line with the duration of the activity.