The UN Trust Fund inviting Demand-Driven Initiatives to End Violence Against Women

Deadline: 22-Apr-2024

The UN Trust Fund seeks to fund demand-driven initiatives aimed at strengthening emerging networks, coalitions and/or movements focusing on ending violence against women and girls in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa who will document their practice-based lessons and experiences.

The UN Trust Fund is in the process of identifying women’s rights organizations (WROs) and/or civil society organizations (CSOs) to implement sub-regional or regional initiatives aimed at strengthening emerging networks, coalitions and/or movements focusing on ending violence against women and girls in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. These initiatives will be supported under the auspices of the Advocacy, Coalition Building and Transformative Feminist Action (ACT) programme, developed in partnership with the European Union, UN Women and the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) to accelerate efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls.

The Advocacy, Coalition Building and Transformative Feminist Action (ACT) programme has been developed in partnership with the European Union, UN Women and the UN Trust Fund to accelerate efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls. The programme focuses on action at the global, regional, and sub-regional level, with a focus on Africa and Latin America.  Its overall objective is to accelerate efforts to eliminate all forms of VAWG, under two outcomes through:

• Outcome 1: Strengthened coalition building, networking, leadership, and resilience of global and regional feminist women’s rights movements and
• Outcome 2: Increased and enhanced advocacy, campaigning, policymaking on EVAW through multistakeholder partnerships and coalitions.

The UN Trust Fund aims to build on its many years of support to WROs and CSOs at national levels by elevating action to the regional and global level by contributing to the ACT programme through direct investments in women’s rights and other-constituency-led organizations in Africa and Latin America.  It will award grants to women’s rights networks, coalitions and movements implementing projects at sub-regional, regional and cross regional levels to end violence against women and girls, of which capacity development and learning will be an integral part.

During the inception phase of the ACT Programme, civil society consultations took place in Africa, Latin America and New York and one of the key agreements was to establish regional networks of CSOs working on EVAW as well as a Global ACT Network of CSOs to facilitate networking, strategizing and collective action under a shared advocacy agenda to end violence against women. It is anticipated that the organizations that receive grants under this call will participate in and contribute to these networks at the regional and global level.

Funding Information

• Funding is available for 18 months for a grant amount between US $200,000 – US $300,000.
• It is expected that Partner Agreements would be signed in October 2024.

Description of Expected Results

• Recognizing that the formation of movements in each region has been highly influenced by unique histories and contexts as well as country and region-specific issues such as language barriers and political circumstances, and noting that CSOs/WROs are best-placed to identify the kinds of strategies and changes that are most relevant in their specific contexts, the UN Trust Fund broadly seeks expressions of interested focused on:
  • New or emerging feminist movements for EVAW/G. This could include organizations coming together across countries and/or regions to:
    • Expand the scope and membership of existing networks and coalitions to make movements for EVAW/G more inclusive, for example, to include representation from marginalized groups.
    • Support new or emerging youth / young feminist movements or strengthen the inter-generational aspects of existing movements with a focus on EVAW/G, for sustainability.
    • Generate new ideas, visions, structures, models and/or prototypes for feminist movements focused on EVAW/G, for example to take advantage of new opportunities such as ICT and digitalization.
  • New or evolving forms and manifestations of VAW/G. This could include organizations coming together across countries and/or regions to:
    • Identify, research, plan and/or implement and learn from initiatives to address shared experiences of new or evolving forms of VAW/G (e.g., violence against women human rights defenders).
    • Address specific, new, or emerging forms of VAW/G to be context-defined (e.g., technology-facilitated violence).
  • New or evolving challenges facing EVAW/G movements. This could include organizations coming together across countries and/or regions to identify, research, design, plan and/or implement and learn from initiatives to address:
    • Shared challenges, threats and crises that are exacerbating VAW/G across countries and regions, such as climate change, migration, conflict.
    • Shared context-specific emergencies and/or protected crises that intersect with VAW/G and are evolving and being experienced across countries and regions, e.g., across borders.
    • Shared threats to feminist movements, WROs and other constituent led CSOs working on EVAW/G, such as resourcing constraints, gender equality backlash, anti-gender movements etc.
    • They particularly encourage interest from those representing or involving young women and girls as well as groups facing intersecting forms of discrimination/marginalization.

Eligibility Criteria

• Mandatory Requirements
  • Must be proposing to implement a project in two or more of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa and/or Latin America.
  • Must have certified annual financial statements for the previous three fiscal years (2020, 2021, 2022). These do not need to be attached to the EOI at this stage.
  • Must have been in operation as an organization for at least five (5) years, or in exceptional circumstances, three (3) years, if fully with justification as to why included in the cover lettered.
  • Must be proposing an initiative that relates to the key services that the applicant/proponent has been performing as an organization to date. This must be supported by letters from at least two references for which similar service is currently or has been provided by the applicant/proponent. These do not need to be attached to the EOI at this stage.
  • All lead applicants and co-implementing partners (those receiving a portion of the project funds) must be officially registered or have a legal basis/mandate as an organization   These do not need to be attached to the EOI at this stage.
  • Should have a permanent office within the location area.
  • Must be able to allow UN Women to conduct a site visit at the location or area with a similar scope of work as the one in the proposed initiative.
  • Must be able to confirm that organization has not been the subject of a finding of fraud or any other relevant misconduct following an investigation conducted by UN Women or another United Nations entity and is not currently under investigation for fraud or any other relevant misconduct by UN Women or another United Nations entity.
  • Must be able to confirm that organization not been and currently is not the subject of any investigations and/or has not been charged for any misconduct related to sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA).
• Technical & Operational competencies
  • Expertise and at least five years of experience in the field of ending violence against women and girls.  In exceptional circumstances (e.g. for new organizations that have been in existence for less time) three years of history may be accepted.
  • At least three years of relevant experience in creating, building or supporting women’s rights and feminist movements, preferably to end violence against women and girls.
  • At least one year of experience on intervention research or practice-based learning or knowledge, such as research, development of knowledge products, storytelling, podcast, video, journal, evaluations of interventions and others.
  • Experience or demonstrable technical and operational capacity to implement regional/sub-regional level EVAW/G initiatives preferred.
  • Operational and absorptive capacity supported by an annual organizational budget of at least US $130,000 (on average over the past 3 years) .
• Priority Organizations
  • Women’s rights organizations (WROs). To be considered a “women’s rights organization”, the applicant must demonstrate its core work is in the field of women’s rights, gender equality, the elimination of violence against women and/or girls, or sexual and gender-based violence. The organization’s official mission and vision statements must reflect its commitment to pursuing gender equality and empowering women and girls.
  • Women-led organizations. To be considered a “women-led organization”, the applicant must demonstrate it is governed and led by women. This requires evidence that a minimum of 61 per cent of leadership positions across various decision-making levels, including in management, senior management and board levels are held by women.
  • Organizations led by and for under-represented women and girls (constituent-led)12 who represent marginalized groups of women and girls. Organizations of people with disabilities13, organizations of indigenous women, associations for lesbian, bisexual and trans women (LBT), survivor-led organizations, refugee-led and refugee/IDP-focused organizations, and girl-led and girl-centered organizations are particularly encouraged to apply.
  • Note for International non-government organizations (INGOs): INGOs may apply on the condition that they clearly demonstrate their added value and intention to engage with and strengthen the capacities of local WRO/CSO partners on programming and/or coordination in a mutually enabling manner. The application must be submitted by an organization which is legally registered in sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America by the entity which is legally registered sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America.

For more information, visit UN Women.