Deadline: 31-Aug-20
The Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) East Africa initiative seeks to spur transformative change to advance gender equality in the world of work.
GrOW East Africa is a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Canada’s IDRC. It builds on the legacy of the recently concluded multi-funder GrOW program.
Scope
GrOW East Africa will support locally grounded in-depth evaluative and action research to identify and scale successful solutions for achieving women’s empowerment and gender equality in the world of work. The goal is to enhance effective and evidence-informed policies, programs, and interventions on unpaid care and the gender segregation of work to address persistent economic gaps in eastern Africa.
Thematic Areas
- Tackling the continued labour market segregation and employment gender gaps: GrOW East Africa invites proposals that generate options, innovations, and scalable solutions for enhancing women’s increased participation in non-traditional sectors and in better, higher-paying jobs.
- Sub-theme 1: Skills building and work readiness programs for women to increase entry, retention, and advancement in under-represented sectors.
- Sub-theme 2: Enhancing the effectiveness of government procurement programs in achieving women’s economic empowerment.
- Reducing and redistributing women’s unpaid care work: GrOW East Africa invites research proposals that test locally grounded and scalable models for reducing and redistributing unpaid care work to improve labour market outcomes for women.
- Sub-theme 1: Scalable childcare provisions.
- Sub-theme 2: Changing norms and public perceptions about unpaid care work.
- Sub-theme 3: Technologies that reduce and redistribute unpaid care work.
The program will support two types of research projects:
- Evaluative projects that assess current or past programs related to GrOW East Africa thematic priorities to generate evidence about effective approaches. These projects will have a budget of up to CA$500,000 and a duration of up to 24 months.
- Action research projects with key policy actors (government, private sector, or non-governmental) that test and/or scale solutions that address one or more of the priority themes of GrOW East Africa. These projects will have a budget of up to CA$700,000 and a duration of up to 36 months.
Funding Information
- Through an open competitive process, GrOW East Africa expects to fund ten to twelve projects.
- For evaluation projects, there is a budget of up to CA$500,000 each for up to 24 months.
- For action/implementation research projects, there is a budget of up to CA$700,000 each for up to 36 months.
- The final grant amount and the number of grants will be determined after the selection of proposals and assessment of value for money.
Funds should be used to implement applied research in support of scaling the selected innovations. This could include:
- Measures to adapt and refine the innovations to the contextual needs of the selected countries;
- Developing and testing means and models to scale them;
- Supporting capacity-building of people or groups who will use the adapted approaches; and
assessing results.
Eligibility Criteria
Applicants that meet the following criteria are invited to apply:
- Type of organization: Proposed projects must be undertaken by research-oriented institutions with legal corporate registration. The lead institution must be registered in one of the countries of focus: Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and/or Tanzania. Proposed research may be carried out by a research institution, research consortia, think tank, or non-governmental organization with strong research capacity. Preference will be given to projects with multi-stakeholder and multidisciplinary teams.
- Collaboration: Research consortia comprised of up to three institutional partners may apply, however one partner must be designated as the lead institution. The lead institution should submit the application to IDRC on behalf of the consortium. The lead institution will sign the grant agreement with IDRC and as such will be responsible for receiving and administering the funds and ensuring that all grant conditions are met. All other partners will be third-party organizations and IDRC will not enter into an agreement with them. Partnerships between research organizations, policymakers, the private sector, and civil society are highly recommended. A letter of support to show private or government stakeholder engagement is encouraged.
- Countries of research focus: Proposed projects must be carried out in one or more of the following East African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and/or Tanzania.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2XK8mRa