Deadline: 29-Mar-22
The British Embassy Kyiv (BEK) is now accepting project proposals for the 2022/2023 financial year (April 2022 – March 2023) from not-for-profit organisations.
Program Details
- Empower primarily women’s rights organisations, as well as wider actors working for gender equality and social inclusion, in Ukraine to advance a localized and inclusive WPS agenda, meeting the urgent identified needs of women, girls, and excluded groups in the community they serve, including older women and women with disabilities. This will include supporting interventions for improved social cohesion, community services, and coordination with humanitarian and recovery efforts on gender and equality aims. It may include addressing the specific needs of women and children on the move and in the host, communities inside and displaced outside of Ukraine – where it relates to the WPS agenda.
- Enable women’s rights organisations and wider actors to continue efforts to identify persons with specific needs and referrals to state services and humanitarian assistance and to provide lifesaving sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and response services in line with the Inter-Agency Minimum Standards.
- Working through Ukrainian women leaders, mediators, and women’s rights organisations to provide support to deliver on the second National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security 2020-2025 objectives and support women’s engagement and meaningful participation in the humanitarian response, in national and international decision-making and policy agendas in response to the unfolding crisis, and civil society action at the community level [with the flexibility to adapt to the unfolding situation].
- Provision of rapid gender and inclusion real-time analysis; data disaggregation by sex, age, and disability (to enable a gender-sensitive response during the crisis); human rights monitoring, including monitoring of sexual violence, and; enhancing accountability for gender equality, women’s empowerment, and the rights of excluded groups in Ukraine
- Collaboration with representative groups including organisations of persons with disabilities to ensure WPS and humanitarian responses address diverse needs and amplify meaningful and inclusive participation.
Essential Skills and Competencies of the Implementer
- Strong operational experience of working in Ukraine or similar environments in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECAD) region
- Strong working knowledge on the women peace and security agenda, preferably on women’s meaningful participation in peace and decision-making processes
- good gender and conflict analysis skills
- strong knowledge of Ukraine’s informal and formal political structures and local and national-level conflict dynamics, and the ability to work closely with Ukrainian counterparts in all regions of the country
- the ability to source appropriate expertise to support the mapping, capacity building, and advocacy components, both in-country and if necessary, from outside
- experience and familiarity with gender programming
- project and budget management skills, experience, capabilities, and capacity
- experience of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning processes, including but not limited to outcome harvesting
- robust approaches to risk management, conflict sensitivity, disability inclusion, safeguarding
Funding Information
- projects will be funded initially for 11 months from 10 May 2022 to 31 March 2023
- successful implementers must receive project funding in GBP and open a GBP bank account for the project
- project bids should demonstrate 85% spent by 31 December 2022 and 100% spent by 31 March 2023
- potential implementers are allowed to combine efforts and submit their project proposals in a consortium of several organisations (implementers).
- Those could be both international and local non-commercial organisations or multilateral organisations, working in the Ukrainian context. If this option is chosen, one entity should be the main Partner, which will coordinate efforts of the joint initiative and will be primarily responsible for the project implementation.
- Governmental institutions may act as project co-funders or beneficiaries only
- minimum budget limit: [GBP 500,000] (five hundred thousand pounds sterling)
- maximum budget limit: [GBP750,000] (seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling)
- bids where possible should not exceed 30 pages
- bids must be in English
Funding Exceptions
- Funding cannot be used to finance the following:
- procurement of medical Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), vaccines, diagnostic tests/materials, and COVID-19 related medicines
- procurement of land or property
- construction works
- purchase or maintenance of IT and capital equipment (if the equipment is essential for achieving the project outputs and impact, please complete a separate “Equipment Purchase Supporting Letter” and submit it with the project proposal and budget)
- fundraising efforts of the organisation.
Eligibility Criteria
- realistic outcomes which are achievable within the funding period (10 May 2022 – 31 March 2023)
- the evidence they can adapt and flex to the unfolding situation in Ukraine, potential shifts in WPS priorities, and the needs of women and girls – including through the use of rapid situational analysis
- the project design includes clear monitoring and evaluation procedures, as well as risk and financial accountability procedures
- evidence of sustainability – demonstrating that project benefits continue after the funding ends
- alignment of the project budget with requirements and recommendations listed in CSSF activity-based budget template and the project proposal
- alignment with the Paris Agreement, demonstrating that a climate and environmental risk and impact evaluation was done and no environmental harm will be done
- the organisations have robust safeguarding policies and implementation plans in place to ensure the protection of beneficiaries and to safeguard against sexual exploitation, abuse, and sexual harassment (SEAH). Evidence that the organisations will effectively tackle discrimination and ensure equality of opportunity for those with protected characteristics in line with UK equalities legislation, including International Development (Gender Equality Act) and Public Sector Equality Duty
- the project budget demonstrates a sufficient level of details and overall value for money
- They aim to ensure that the total amount of project management team costs, project operation support costs, and office support costs would ideally not exceed the 10% ceiling of the overall project costs. In case your organisation has a central agreement with the FCDO to include head office overhead costs into the CSSF project budgets (e.g. international multilateral agencies), those can be added to the project budget in line with the central agreement and are not counted into the 10% ceiling.
For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/news/call-for-bids-supporting-women-peace-and-security-in-ukraine-under-the-conflict-security-and-stability-fund-programme-2022-23–2