Deadline: 23-Jun-23
Maharat Foundation in collaboration with Free Press Unlimited (FPU), is launching an opportunity to apply for the second innovation grant within a program called “Core Support for Independent Media in the Southern Neighborhood” with the support of the European Union.
The overall strategy of the programme aims to:
- Objective 1: improving sector capacities to safely produce and share more high-quality content within and outside the Southern Neighbourhood
- Objective 2: improving business viability and resilience among the independent media outlets in the Southern Neighbourhood.
- Objective 3: strengthening existing regional networks to more efficiently convene communities of practice in the Southern Neighbourhood.
Objectives
- The overall objective of the grant is to provide short-term, small-scale funding for projects that can advance new or scale up promising media innovations and/or interesting media/journalism collaborations seeking to build a media business and serve local and often under-served audiences (e.g. teenagers/young adults, women/girls, marginalized communities/regions with independent quality information. The specific objective are:
- Pay attention to the unusual suspects and embrace new entrants to the sector, with emphasis on supporting innovative projects that lead by example. Innovation refers to the development of new ideas, challenges, such as: New media formats (storytelling techniques, transmedia formats etc.), technological advancements (new technologies to enhance production, distribution, and consumption of media content) audience engagement and participation, accessibility and inclusivity to cater diverse user needs, data driven innovations etc.
- Promote diversity i.e. address youth and gender gaps in media representation or provide voice to marginalized groups. Marginalized groups are defined as social groups that face systematic disadvantage and exclusion within society due to various factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status. Example of marginalized groups are Immigrants, Refugees, LGBTQ+ community, People living with disability, racial and ethnic minorities, socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals.
Type of Support
- 3 projects per grant cycle will be selected.
- In addition to financial support, the selected candidates will benefit from support on design thinking methods within an innovation lab for 2 days in order to improve/develop their ideas and approach.
- Throughout the whole project duration (maximum six months), the grantees will be mentored by the regional partner based on their needs and demands (e.g. development of action plan, regular feedback on their ideas, brainstorming etc.).
- The jury formed by Maharat and FPU will organize, in collaboration with the grantees, mid-term online M&E (with jury and grantees) to review progress and offer feedback/guidance (as needed).
Funding Information
- Maximum duration of the grant is six months, each grantee can receive an amount of maximum 20,000 Euro (Maximum of 70% will be funded, with the expectation that the remaining 30% of the total budget comes from other means)
- Duration: Maximum duration of the grant is six months.
Eligible Activities
- Eligible activities to receive the grants:
- Technical innovations for use in newsrooms;
- Projects stimulating, generating or receiving independent data for the use of journalism;
- Testing/developing cross-media formats, solution- based/constructive journalism approaches;
- Increasing audience engagement with content producers and increasing dialogue (post-production experiences);
- Experiments to increase the monetisation of journalistic content.
Target Countries: Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia, Syria
Eligibility Criteria
- Media start-ups; journalism incubators
- Innovative media initiatives
- Non-profit and for-profit media organizations
- Individual journalists (freelancers) and entrepreneurs, journalist collectives
- Additionally, any initiatives or applicants which have previously benefited from funding under the ‘Core Support for Independent Media in the Southern Neighbourhood’ are ineligible for this grant cycle.
For more information, visit Innovation Grants.