Call for Proposals: Promotion of Women’s, Girls’ and Children’s Rights in Tanzania

Deadline: 1-Mar-23

The Women Fund Tanzania (WFT) Trust is accepting applications from legal entities (Women’s, girls’ and children’s, rights organisations and initiatives led by and for women, community-based organizations, groups, institutions and transformative/progressive men-led organizations working on a feminist agenda) that are based and operating in Tanzania.

The Registered Trustees of Women Fund Tanzania (WFT Trust) is the first national feminist Fund in the country and the only funding support mechanism, started by women, for women, girls and children. The Fund seeks to achieve lasting feminist gains by addressing the root causes of unequal power relations, including gender-based inequalities, and other oppressive systems, attitudes, and social norms in various fields. They do this through funding women rights organisations, women’s, girls’, children’s rights organisations and movement(s), and other social justice movements to be able to amplify voices and organise for collective transformative action to achieve progressive social change with agency.

The main focus is to resource grassroots Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs) and movements, especially at the local level, because they believe that they are the experts of their own realities and have incredible organising power, voice, innovative leadership, and agency to transform the disempowering contexts they live in to realise their full potential and rights as human beings.

Thematic Areas

• Key thematic areas for funding in 2023 are:
  • Violence against women, girls, and children –– with a focus on addressing sexual corruption/sextortion, Femicide (killing of women and girls based on gender), Online Gender-Based violence (Cyber Bullying), mental health related violence on women, girls, children and other marginalized social groups and those affected by constraining cultural violence and discourses in rural and urban communities. This also includes educational justice and rights – disrupting cultural and institutional inequalities that prevent girls from equal and full participation in education including rape culture, teen pregnancies, child marriage, and initiatives to support girl’s re-entry into formal school systems.
  • Women’s Political Participation and Leadership – addressing existing and emerging issues that prevent women and girls to fully participate in electoral cycle(s) processes including challenging systems and structures that prevent women and girls from entering and staying in leadership positions in their communities, corporates, and other public spaces of service.
  • Economic Justice and sustainability – breaking policy and cultural barriers that limit women and girls’ effective economic participation and prevent them from benefiting from broader economic sectors such as oil, gas, and extractives. This also includes engagement in broader policy strategies aimed at promoting women and girls voice and participation in gender budgeting initiatives, financial inclusion services, provision of feminist support such as Women and Money education, and others.
  • Environmental justice and gender – addressing policies, laws, and cultural challenges facing women and young girls in exercising their voice and agency, including addressing adverse effects of environmental degradation with a particular focus on climate change and land rights for women, girls and other social marginalized populations.
  • Feminist Research and Documenting – Using feminist lenses to strengthen feminist research, on current and relevant areas of interest such as women peace and security women’s role in preventing conflict and participating is peace making processes, document and capture women’s lived realities in the form of literature, pictures and videos; questioning the existing gender inequalities and systems of oppression. Through documenting and publicizing these lived experiences amplify women’s voices in critical spaces. (Applicants can focus on sub themes such as improving visibility and popularising women and girls’ contributions through Herstories to change discourses, innovative use of multimedia platforms and tools, animation and community radio programming).
  • Sports, popular art, and culture – challenging gender based exclusionary and exploitative practices, biases including degrading language for transforming policies, laws, social norms in sports, popular art, culture and related others.
  • Promotion of Reproductive Health Rights – Applications are open for interventions that promote rights based and feminist focused approaches that address reproductive rights and for social movement(s) building that enhance the capacity of key actors to advocate for issues denying women and adolescent girls’ access to relevant and gender sensitive information, reproductive health rights including but not limited to services, informed decision making, agency, participation and enabling them to implement strategies to enhance access to marginalized groups including disability and select others.
  • Movement Building and Strengthening – Interventions that promote growth and deepening of feminist based movements which adopts inter-sectional, inter-generational and inclusive approaches in accelerating transformative and feminist changes within the women’s and girls’ movement(s), and between these movements and other social movements including those working on advancing disability rights, children’s rights, reproductive health rights, migrant rights, gender rights for minority groups, and environmental justice for collective interventions and actions towards advancing feminist outcomes in transforming negative cultural attitudes, social norms, and public discourses as well as policy and legal frameworks which perpetuates these ills at different levels.

What are they looking for?

• Applicants should strive to reflect in their proposals key guiding principles outlined:
  • Mission aligned
  • Partners who share their aspiration of contributing towards the elimination of gender inequalities, discriminatory, practices, and processes through capacity enhancement and women’s movement building, and whose work fits within their identified thematic areas.
  • Clarity on the issues to be addressed by the project
    • The proposal should ensure a strong link between the problem to be addressed and the strategies and measurable results anticipated from the project.
    • The proposal should reflect multi-stakeholder participation (within the women’s movements and across other movements) in formulation and implementation of forming/strengthening functional networks, coalitions, and platforms (especially for windows 2&3).
    • The proposal should use models that demonstrate sustainability, innovation, replicability, and scaling up potential.
    • Your proposals should include strategic use of local, regional, and international days as opportunities and platforms to amplify your projects like the International Day of the African Child, International Day of Rural Women, and 16 Days of Activism etc.

Grant Application Windows

• Small scale window
  • The Small Window funding is the core of WFT Trust’s focus as it targets community-based women rights groups, feminist WROs and WOs as well as individuals that are looking for funding to ignite initiative with potential within communities through transformative and empowering approaches and/or ideas. The Grant can be used for capacity building, awareness raising, and for galvanizing social action in their communities and others.
    • The duration of the intervention/project to be implemented is between 0 and 3 months.
    • The intervention is aimed at giving voice and visibility to women’s and girls’ issues, particularly marginalized women, special groups, and vulnerable populations in local communities.
    • Mainly for first time applicants from community-based levels.
• Medium scale window
  • Projects under this Window should focus on initiatives for supporting women’s, girls’ and children’s rights organizations to build/strengthen relevant conceptual and organizational capacities, and expertise for networking and knowledge sharing with the women’s and girls’ movements.
    • The grant period should be between 6 months and 1 year.
    • Must aim at giving voice and visibility to marginalized women, girls and children on marginalized issues as stipulated in the call for a proposal.
    • The window is open to women and girls’ initiatives at the local and national levels, which need funds for organizational strengthening including transitioning or are building on an initial grant to strengthen strategic alliances and networks in the women’s movement at different levels.
• Strategic window
  • The Strategic Window is meant for funding longer term projects/interventions of up to 2 years in duration and for activities that target feminist movement/platform/coalition building efforts. The window can also be used to support WROs that are growing and that need support with core funding to building institutional and organizational capacity. In particular graduating middle window recipients and National level WROs (National level Women’s Rights Organizations, Women Organizations with a potential for movement building that includes reach, agenda setting and constituent base – building interventions) are more suited to this window because of their relative growth and mandate in movement or coalition/platform building work.
  • The grant in this window can also be sought to support cross movement work within the various women, girls and children’s movements. Feminist WROs possessing relevant institutional capacity, expertise, networking, and local knowledge to work with other partners (both local and national) to strengthen women’s movement building strategies across sectors are encouraged to apply. Within this frame, they are accepting proposals aimed at initiating and scaling up interventions that promote collective/joint advocacy actions, cross border platforms, collective networking and learning within the various sectors of women and girls’ and children’s movement/s in the country.

Eligibility Criteria

• WFT Trust is accepting applications from Women’s, girls’ and children’s, rights organisations and initiatives led by and for women, community-based organisations, groups, institutions, legal entities and transformative/progressive men-led organisations working on a feminist agenda) that are based and operating in Tanzania.

Please note: No offer, payment, gift, consideration, or benefits of any kind, which constitutes or could be construed as an illegal or fraudulent practice, will be made, either directly or indirectly, as an inducement or reward for the success of an application.

For more information, visit WFT Trust.