Deadline: 20-Sep-22
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has launched the Reconciliation Fund, an awards grants for organisations working to build better relations within and between traditions in Northern Ireland, between North and South, and between Ireland and Britain.
The new Strategy provided for the expansion of the Strategic Partnership multi-annual funding stream that had been piloted under the Reconciliation Fund’s previous Strategy. Under the new funding stream, around 15-30 organizations will be eligible to become a Strategic Partner of the Fund, with a commitment to funding over a 3-year period, allowing them to develop a more strategic long term approach to planning their work.
Thematic
Our funding priorities continue to be rooted in two key overarching thematic pillars – repairing and building . For 2021-2024, the Reconciliation Fund will focus its support on reconciliation and peacebuilding work that seeks to:
- Repair those issues which lead to division, conflict, and barriers to a deeply reconciled and peaceful society; and/or
- Build a strong civil society that encompasses all communities, through the continued implementation of the Agreements and promoting a rights-based society, political stability and respect for all.
Priority areas
Applications should be in line with one or both of these overarching pillars, while also focusing on one or more of the Reconciliation Fund’s priority themes/activities. Requests for funding support should therefore involve projects which support at least one of the following priority areas:
- Through dialogue or other means, seek to build understanding between peoples and traditions, whether within Northern Ireland, on a North-South basis, or on a British-Irish basis.
- Promote inter-community links and reduce segregation in Northern Ireland, including in the areas of integrated education and housing, and the use of shared community spaces.
- Build sustainable North-South links through the development of relationships and connections.
- Develop and deepen relations between Ireland and Britain.
- Seek participation in the most hard-to-reach and marginalized communities (in terms of economic and social deprivation), or those not normally involved in reconciliation and peace-building work, in line with the Government’s commitments made at the time of the NDNA Agreement .
- Seek to address the legacy of violence during the Troubles.
- Specifically target sectarianism, and which are aimed at eliminating sectarianism from society.
- Help to tackle paramilitarism and support the transitioning of members of paramilitary groups to peaceful, democratic activities.
- Employ a transgenerational approach, helping a younger generation to be more aware of the recent past and to break the cycles which are barriers to long term reconciliation.
- Develop the role of women in peace-building and civic and political life, in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1325, and which build their capacity to take their rightful place as leaders in society.
- Educate and illuminate the events of the past, and in particular the events of the Decade of Centenaries, in order to deepen understanding and promote respect and tolerance between different groups and traditions.
- Explore issues around identity (including language and other cultural traditions) in ways that promote understanding, tolerance and inclusivity, or help to recognize the common aspects of traditions and identities shared by different groups.
- Involve academic research likely to significantly promote mutual understanding, peace and reconciliation, including in the context of the Government’s commitment at the time of the NDNA Agreement to commission research on the challenges faced by border communities (with a particular focus on minority communities in border counties ).
- Empower diverse, underrepresented or new voices to articulate their views on issues relating to reconciliation.
- Assist communities from different traditions in trying to build a shared vision of the future.
Criteria
- The Reconciliation Fund welcomes applications that propose new and innovative approaches, as well as those that use methods rooted in current practice. We also welcome applications that use any of a wide number of approaches to bring people from different backgrounds together (eg arts, culture, sports, skills development, dialogue) exploring how society can address issues of common concern to all.
- In the case of more sectorally based projects (sports, community services, skills development eg for employability etc.), in terms of eligibility for funding, it is not sufficient to have groups come together on a cross-community and/or cross border basis . There must be a project component that allows for facilitated focus on broader issues that are relevant to reconciliation.
- In order to support the emergence of a new generation of people working to build peace and reconciliation, we will therefore consider applications that seek to provide young adults working in the sector with the skills and knowledge which will help them to play an active role in that work.
- We recognize that there is a wide spectrum of groups of different sizes and capacities working in reconciliation. The Reconciliation Fund is open to supporting organizations to build up their own capacity where the organization can show an identified need while also demonstrating that it has strong potential to carry out useful work in line with our priorities.
For more information, visit https://www.dfa.ie/reconciliation