Deadline: 28-May-21
The Empowering Women Fund, part of the Labyrinth Project, is a Tampon Tax funded grant scheme led by Solace Women’s Aid (Solace). The Labyrinth Project aims to help women get to an empowered position through the provision of holistic wide-ranging support that is needs-led, placing women at the centre of their own interventions.
The grant scheme aims to support the sustainability of women’s groups in local communities and to help women get to an empowered position. Your project must support the UK’s most vulnerable, disadvantaged and/or underrepresented women and girls. Priority will be given to applications that target a particular marginalised group.
Solace is particularly looking for projects that will:
- Improve women’s understanding of the law, their rights and access to legal advice.
- Improve women’s mental health and well-being, increasing confidence, motivation, tools, skills, and support to sustain those improvements and increase independence.
- Decrease social isolation and increase women’s ability to participate in community activities.
- Improve women’s financial resilienceand employability, increasing their routes out of poverty, gaining confidence, tools, skills, and support to secure a stable financial future.
Priority Areas
Your application will need to fit one of the following priority areas:
- Education and employment support for women.
- Work to increase legal support for women.
- Work to provide financially vulnerable women and girls and women on low incomes with debt/financial support.
- Work with LBT-specific women and girls.
- Work with Black and minoritized-specific women and girls.
- Work with older women.
- Work with women and girls with disabilities and/or women and girls with learning disabilities.
- Work with women and girls with multiple and/or complex needs.
- Work to formalise the structure of your organisation.
What is the funding for?
- The funding aims to address the need for more joined-up, holistic, women-centred services to respond to the range of issues affecting women’s liveswhich have been intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic. These issues include violence against women and girls, to financial, employment and legal issues. Grants will be available in England, Scotland & Northern Ireland.
- The Empowering Women Fund will be divided into two strands and grants can run for up to 12 months. The priority for the grant scheme is to help women’s centres and organisations survive and grow, building capacity and supporting the sustainability of the women’s sector.
Funding Information
Organisations can apply for:
- Seed funding grants (£500-£1,000): Available to small women’s groups to establish and run micro women’s empowerment projects in their local area that support women to build skills and confidence, and decrease social isolation.
- Women’s Sector grants (£1,000-£25,000): Available for women’s groups and organisations to develop capacity to respond to changing needs in their communities and run projects over a fixed duration of at least 6 months.
Eligibility Criteria
- Grants are available for women’s groups, centres and organisations in England, Scotland & Northern Ireland.
- Solace aims to embed equality, diversity, and inclusion (ED&I) in all that they do and support a system that is inclusive for everyone. They are committed to equal access to opportunity and believe all women should have the opportunity to benefit from the available funding, regardless of age, class, disability, ethnicity, faith, income, or sexuality. They are particularly keen to attract groups who do not normally apply for funding, especially for the seed funding grants.
For more information, visit https://www.solacewomensaid.org/empowering-women-fund