Deadline: 4-May-25
The Sahel Regional Fund has launched a call for expressions of interest to fund integrated and sustainable humanitarian projects in the Central Sahel and Lake Chad Basin.
Faced with the challenges posed by the context of international humanitarian funding, this call aims to enable NGOs to propose interventions that combine critical responses to immediate needs and actions to strengthen the resilience of populations, in line with the Nexus approach and the Humanitarian Response Plans (HRP) of the countries concerned.
Priorities
- Projects proposed for SRF funding must be fully in line with its strategic objectives and respond in an integrated and coherent way to the following priorities and principles:
- Respond to urgent humanitarian needs and contribute to the resilience of vulnerable populations: The projects submitted must provide a flexible response to immediate humanitarian needs by providing emergency solutions to stabilise the living conditions of the populations affected.
- The structuring efforts in terms of resilience will be aimed primarily at strengthening economic resilience: to encourage the autonomy of beneficiaries and reduce their dependence on humanitarian aid, as well as agri-environmental resilience, aimed at improving the sustainable management of natural resources and the livelihoods of rural communities and reducing their vulnerability to climate shocks.
- Multi-purpose and unconditional cash transfers are the modality encouraged: to cover most basic needs, subject to a feasibility assessment (at least a market analysis based on the MEB).
- Projects must propose integrated multi-sectoral interventions: including several complementary sectors, in line with locally identified priorities. This could include food security, health, nutrition, protection and/or WASH, based on territorial and people-centered approaches.
- As far as possible and where relevant, present a cross-border dimension, by intervening in more than one country, considering: regional dynamics and the mobility of populations affected by crises.
- Encourage strong and sustainable local leadership: Local partners must be fully involved in decision-making, contributing to the strategy, design and implementation of the intervention.
- Demonstrate a strong commitment to accountability: ensuring transparency, community participation and access to feedback and complaints mechanisms.
- The impact of projects must be tangible and rigorously measured: and the lessons learnt must be documented and shared in order to encourage learning and capitalisation.
Funding Information
- The total indicative budget available for this call is £12,500,000.
- Projects should last between 12 and 24 months, with a budget of between £1,000,000 and £4,000,000 per project.
Eligible Countries
- This call covers the countries of the central Sahel (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso) as well as the Lake Chad Basin, limited to Chad (Lake Province/Province du Lac only) and Niger.
Eligibility Criteria
- This call is addressed to consortia led by international NGOs or members of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement. As part of the DDA procedure, the SRF will give priority to examining the documents of the lead applicant, while analysing those of the partners in order to ensure the coherence of the consortium and the capacity of the lead to manage the grant effectively.
- All members of the consortium must be registered in accordance with current legislation, in compliance with their legal obligations and not be subject to any convictions.
- In line with the SRF’s commitment to localisation, SRF-funded consortia must include at least one local structure, fully involved in the design and implementation of the project.
- Each NGO may join only one consortium, regardless of its status (local or international NGO), and may participate in only one project submitted for SRF funding under this call.
- Finally, only NGOs that are already established and operational in the target areas are eligible.
Selection Criteria
- These include the following criteria:
- Compliance with the SRF strategy and the SRF Charter, the appeal guidelines and the humanitarian priorities of each of the countries covered.
- The experience of the organisations, their specialisation in the theme(s) submitted, their operational capacity and their access to the areas of intervention.
- Analysis of the context, needs and proposed theory of change (conflict-sensitive analysis, quality of the analysis of the needs and vulnerability of the populations in the area covered, intervention logic, etc.).
- Community involvement and accountability.
For more information, visit Danish Refugee Council.
