CFPs: Strengthening CSO Non-Traditional Actors to advance Cross-Community Collaboration and the WPS Agenda (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Deadline: 30 July 2025

The UN Women has launched the Call for Proposals to Strengthen CSO Non-Traditional Actors to advance Cross-Community Collaboration and the WPS Agenda.

Objectives

• The WPS agenda, outlines key principles essential for advancing gender equality, with a particular focus on strengthening women’s leadership in peace processes, enhancing protection from violence, addressing the needs of women and girls, and promoting gender-responsive governance and security institutions. Empowering local organizations and women peacebuilders to integrate these principles into their work fosters greater security, social cohesion, and justice, ensuring that peacebuilding efforts are inclusive and sustainable.
• The project underscores the need to targeted interventions that not only strengthen the institutional resilience of local civil society organizations (CSOs) but also actively engage non-traditional actors and creative industries in advancing the WPS agenda. Through recent mapping efforts, a diverse landscape of non-traditional stakeholders—including artists, cultural workers, athletes, and private sector actors—has been identified as an underutilized yet critical force for promoting women’s roles in peacebuilding and social cohesion. Creative industries, in particular, offer powerful platforms for storytelling, expression, and cross-community dialogue, making them key allies in challenging gender norms and amplifying women’s voices in peace and security efforts.
• This enhancement will be measured through three key indicators:
  • The number of public, social, or community events organized to promote a culture of peace and the advancement of the WPS agenda will be tracked through both quantitative and qualitative methods.
    • The selected implementing partner will be responsible for organizing and reporting on various types of events (e.g., cultural festivals, community dialogues, sports events, exhibitions) aimed at fostering a culture of peace and advancing WPS principles. Data will be collected through detailed event reports, attendance sheets, photographs, media coverage, and participant feedback forms. Event types will be categorized to allow disaggregation and analysis by theme, format, and target audience. The partner will also collect testimonials and conduct short post-event surveys to assess changes in awareness, attitudes, and participant engagement with the WPS agenda.
  • The number of joint initiatives between women’s CSOs and actors from the field of arts, culture, and sports that promote women’s leadership in peacebuilding and social cohesion will be monitored through collaborative action plans and initiative tracking tools. 
    • The selected partner will facilitate and document joint initiatives between women-led CSOs and professionals from the creative and sports sectors. These may include collaborative campaigns, co-designed public art or performance projects, or peace-themed sports tournaments. Progress and outcomes will be captured through initiative proposals, memoranda of understanding (MoUs), implementation reports, and outputs such as performances, exhibitions, or media content. The partner will also conduct structured interviews with participating organizations to assess how these collaborations enhance women’s leadership visibility and contribute to peace and social cohesion. Feedback from community members and audiences will also be collected to evaluate the resonance and impact of these joint efforts.
  • The number of cross-entity WPS-related initiatives that promote inclusive and lasting peacebuilding efforts in the areas of arts, culture, sports, and activism will be systematically recorded and analyzed to reflect multi-stakeholder collaboration across administrative boundaries. 
    • The implementing partner will support and monitor initiatives that involve stakeholders from different entities within BiH, ensuring geographic and institutional diversity. These initiatives may take the form of joint art installations, inter-entity cultural exchanges, traveling exhibitions, cross-community sports leagues, or advocacy campaigns involving civil society, local authorities, and grassroots actors. The partner will collect documentation such as joint planning notes, event records, communication materials, and formal partnership agreements. Progress will be assessed via stakeholder interviews and outcome-oriented evaluations to determine how these initiatives contribute to long-term peacebuilding and the localization of the WPS agenda.

Outputs

• The intervention will be structured around two interconnected outputs:
  • Support joint initiatives between women’s CSOs and actors from the field of arts, culture and sports aimed at addressing the key human security concerns affecting women and supporting peacebuilding and social cohesion.
  • Support cross-entity collaboration, exchanges and joint approaches between young women and girls using arts, culture, sports, and women’s activism to support social cohesion and inclusive and lasting peacebuilding.

Funding Information

• The total available budget is up to BAM is 200.000 BAM, with individual proposals by applicants to range between 25,000.00 to 50,000.00.

General overview of Services Required/Results 

• The WPS project aims to partner with local civil-society organizations engaged in arts, culture, sports, and related festivals, utilizing these platforms strategically to foster cross-community collaboration, trust-building, and advocacy for the WPS agenda through creative and artistic initiatives. By recognizing festivals as inclusive and culturally resonant spaces, this initiative seeks to harness the power of art, culture, and sports to strengthen social cohesion and peacebuilding.
• The civil-society partners will contribute to the implementation of the outcome 2. Women’s voices and roles in sustaining peace and social cohesion are amplified through collaboration, transformative narratives and country-wide dialogues on WP. This will be achieved through two specific outputs:
  • Increased cross-entity and cross-community collaboration and trust-building is fostered through the engagement of non-traditional actors in the promotion of a culture of peace and advancing the WPS agenda (culture, sports, music, creative industry, private sector, etc.);
  • Women’s role in peacebuilding and social cohesion narratives is amplified through targeted investment in media, local and country-wide dialogues on addressing WPS.

Description of Required Services/Results

• In partnership with civil-society organizations, UN Women will create opportunities for women’s rights advocates to work alongside artists, cultural practitioners, and athletes to co-develop impactful narratives that highlight gendered human security challenges and advocate for inclusive solutions. By integrating artistic expression and creative storytelling with peace and security themes, the initiative will contribute to reshaping public perceptions, amplifying women’s voices, and fostering dialogue across diverse communities.
• The collaboration will also serve as a platform for capacity-building, networking, and cross-sectoral partnerships, ensuring that women’s rights advocates and creative industry professionals can jointly develop innovative approaches to resilience-building. This initiative aligns with project’s efforts to localize the WPS agenda by engaging non-traditional stakeholders and expanding advocacy beyond conventional collaborations with institutions, therefore ensuring a community-driven approach to advancing gender equality and sustainable peace.
• To support the WPS project, selected CSO partners are expected to lead initiatives that connect women’s organizations with non-traditional actors—such as artists, cultural and sports professionals, and private sector representatives—to promote peace and social cohesion. These initiatives should use creative tools like photography, film, performance, and sport to share peacebuilding messages and elevate women’s roles in security processes. Activities will aim to foster cross-entity collaboration, build community trust, and address pressing human security issues impacting women, including gender-based violence, exclusion, and economic insecurity.

Duration

• The implementation period is 6 to 12 months, starting June 15, 2025.

Competencies

• Technical/functional competencies required
  • At least 7 years of expertise in women’s empowerment, with a proven track record in designing and delivering training programs for CSOs.
  • In-depth understanding of the WPS agenda and its application at the local level, supported by relevant documents such as previous project reports, policy briefs, or case studies demonstrating the application of the WPS agenda in similar contexts
  • Strong skills in curriculum development, particularly for adult learning, demonstrated through CVs of key personal that will be engaged in the project implementation or references to similar work conducted by the organization
  • Experience in working with marginalized communities, particularly in conflict-affected or post-conflict settings, and an understanding of their specific needs, demonstrated through documents such as previous project reports.
  • Familiarity with monitoring and evaluation techniques to assess the effectiveness of training and knowledge transfer, demonstrated through CVs of key personnel that will be engaged in the project implementation or references to similar work conducted by the organization.
• Other competencies, which while not required, can be an asset for the performance of services. Organizations are encouraged to attach supporting documents that demonstrate any additional competencies:
  • Experience in promoting diversity and inclusion within organizational structures, community programs, and project implementation, ensuring that marginalized groups, including women, youth, and minority communities, are actively involved and represented in all aspects of the initiative.
  • Knowledge of legal frameworks and policies related to gender equality and women’s rights in BiH.
  • Familiarity with community engagement strategies and conflict resolution techniques.
  • Experience in providing mentorship or coaching within professional settings.

For more information, visit UN Women.