Deadline: 8-May-23
The USAID Youth Excel: Our Knowledge, Leading Change | IREX is launching a small grant competition for youth-led and youth-serving organizations and groups based in Cambodia to conduct Implementation Research Activities on their environment, youth employment, youth mental health, and education programming.
The Youth Excel Activity in Cambodia will develop a more nuanced understanding of Cambodian youth priorities and interests and provide pathways for the Mission of how and in what areas to effectively engage diverse youth in Mission programming. Youth Excel will support youth priorities that align with USAID strategy and build on existing activities and the existing body of knowledge. In the longer term, Youth Excel’s activity will support the Mission to better integrate youth priorities and youth voice in the programming cycle.
Grant competition winners will use gender equality and social inclusion, research-to-change (implementation research), and knowledge mobilization approaches to strengthen their programs, particularly to support youth from marginalized groups and areas, and influence decision-makers.
Funding Information
- Amount: Up to USD $10,000.
- Start: June 1, 2023.
- Length: 3 months.
- Number: Three to five.
- Type: Fixed amount grant.
What kind of work would Youth Excel like support?
- From Youth Excel’s work so far in Phnom Penh, Oddar Meanchey, and Stung Treng, research has shown that certain underserved groups and communities are alienated in society. These groups include young women, indigenous youth, youth with disabilities, certain religious groups, and LGBTQIA+ youth. Youth Excel is committed to inclusive youth development across sectors and looks forward to supporting new USAID partners with these grants.
- Youth Excel welcomes applications from youth-led or youth-serving organizations or groups working on social accountability projects in the following themes, and encourage all applicants to consider how underserved groups or communities may be supported/engaged:
- Environment/climate change
- Youth employment (youth preparation/training and/or direct employment opportunities)
- Non-clinical youth mental health
- Education accessibility (including safe access for marginalized groups; digital access; nutrition, etc.)
What are Youth Excel’s key technical approaches?
- Gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) is an approach that helps us to understand the importance of equal rights and opportunities for all individuals regardless of their social identity. This concept addresses unequal power relations between different social groups that cause exclusion.
- Protection is an approach that helps us to understand and prepare for protection concerns related to Youth Excel, which can be digital, physical, and psychosocial. Youth Excel partners take local protection measures to prevent, mitigate, and respond to risks and threats that Youth Excel can unintentionally exacerbate (risks associated with programs, operations, and people). Youth Excel aims to understand the specific risks, but also the protection capacities, the available resources, and the right to protection of participants.
- Research-to-Change (implementation research): Information is a powerful resource that can be used to help organizations grow and make their programs work better. “Research-to-Change” (implementation research) is a tool that allows organizations to gather data, take what they learn, and turn it into what they do in real-time.
- Knowledge mobilization is Youth Excel’s ‘rebrand’ of knowledge management and dissemination. It includes creating knowledge products that are easily accessible by users, making them openly available to the public for use, and sharing them in a strategic and dynamic way that promotes dialogue and two-way communication (including events and social media, for example).
- Knowledge Products share learning and enable the audience to act based on that learning from the Research-to-Change process. Knowledge products can have different formats, such as manuals, best practices briefs, or data-based recommendations. Knowledge products can be created using different methodologies, like summaries, storytelling, and digital visualizations and take different forms, such as printed documents, podcasts, radio, videos, etc.
- Capacity development supports youth-led and youth-serving organizations to strengthen skills and leverage opportunities in the following areas: using implementation research to strengthen positive youth development programs; applying gender, inclusion, and protection so that programs are more inclusive of diverse youth groups; strengthening opportunities for meaningful youth engagement and intergenerational dialogue; synthesizing, disseminating, and using findings from research more effectively; and managing subawards, including planning, budgeting, reporting, and compliance.
Target geography & participants
- Youth Excel welcome applications from youth-led or youth-serving organizations or groups working throughout Cambodia and encourages applications from organizations or groups working in hard-to-reach geographies, including indigenous communities.
- Organizations should offer Positive Youth Development (PYD) programming in sectors noted above and should target participants age 15-35.
- Youth-led organizations or groups applicants are encouraged, as are organizations or groups that focus on underserved populations including youth with disabilities, indigenous youth, youth from diverse religious groups, young women, and LGBTQIA+ youth.
Location: Cambodia
Eligibility Criteria
- Local organization or group in Cambodia
- Non-governmental or private organization or groupof any type
- Youth-led and/or youth-serving organizations or groups:
- Youth-led organization or group whose Chief Executive Officer or other leaders are under the age of 35, and whose Board of Directors are predominantly under the age of 35.
- Youth-serving organization or group that has a mission, mandate, or programs with an expressed priority of serving or supporting youth under age 35.
Ineligible
- Individual
- International organization
- Consortium of multiple organizations
- Government institutions or political parties
- Has conflict of interest
For more information, visit Youth Excel.