Small Grants for CSOs/OPDs under the Joint Programme – Georgia

Deadline: 21-Apr-23

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) Georgia Office is offering small grants to eligible Civil Society Organizations (CSO)/Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) to support the development or strengthening of CSOs’ institutional capacities active in the area of disability service provision.

Under this call, UN Women intends to support the organizational development of civil society organizations at local and national levels as local service providers to persons with disabilities (and refugees), including through mentoring and coaching support. The envisaged grants will contribute towards capacity development of CSOs in the area of mainstreaming gender and disability in the humanitarian response. Inter alia, the CSOs that will be supported to develop gender-sensitive internal policies and integrate disability issues and gender equality in their internal structures and will subsequently promote the culture of tolerance, equality, and non-discrimination in the country.

Funding Information

• UN Women’s small grants are limited to a minimum of USD 2,500 and maximum of USD 10,000 per CSO per 6-month period.

Activities

• Introducing and improving organizational systems, tools, and processes (GovernanceManagement Structure and Financial and Administrative Management areas) to strengthen organisation from institutional perspective.
  • Indicative activities could be but not limited to the following:
    • Analysis and adjustment of the organization’s Statute (for ensuring transparent oversight of the organization decision making; update the roles of the board and audit committee, etc.)
    • Development/adjustment of organization’s organigram and updating job descriptions, etc.;
    • Development of organization’s Strategy and Activity plan with integrated gender equality perspective;
    • Development of a Gender sensitive and/or disability inclusive Communication, PR and Visibility strategy
    • Development of a Manual of internal policies and procedures of the organization, or separate policies and procedures on areas like:
      • human resources (employment of staff, contractual services, leaves, payments, professional development, performance evaluation, bonuses, etc.
      • data privacy and data protection;
      • code of conduct for staff and partners, inclusively on prohibition of sexual exploitation and abuse, and sexual harassment; non-discrimination and gender equality
      • filing of documents
      • transparent financial management (reporting, auditing, payments, etc.)
      • transparent and efficient procurements (procurement plan, ceilings, announcing and evaluation of offers, etc.), by integrating gender equality perspectives
      • anti-fraud and anti-corruption policies/provisions
      • conflict of interests, etc.
        • Development of advocacy strategy and advocacy plan
        • Development of fundraising strategy
        • Website development or upgrading
• Building capacity of workforce in overall technical/managerial skills:
  • Participation in national and international trainings for strengthening the technical and managerial capacities of the staff of the organization. Tentative training areas could be but not limited to: project writing, project management, results-based management, financial management for CSOs and fundraising, public communication, advocacy, volunteering, languages/computer literacy, etc.;
• Building capacity of workforce to support stronger movement towards gender equality and rights of people with disabilities:
  • The organizations may attract external expertise to build capacity and skills of its staff and volunteers to promote effectively the rights of people with disability on community/regional/national level on topics including, but not limited to:
    • Address stigma and misconceptions related to disabilities to remove barriers to the physical environment for refugees with disabilities;
    • Conducting situational analysis preceding the interventions on local level;
    • Applying into practices of comprehensive human/victim-centered, multi-disciplinary, “do no harm”, “leave no one behind” and innovative approaches;
    • Developing/enhancing strategically focused advocacy, lobbying, communication and media campaigns to address harmful practices related to disability area (including conceptualizing and conducting awareness-raising campaigns to effectively address misconceptions and transform attitudes, beliefs and societal norms);
    • Involving women activists/platforms, unofficial networks and partnering with local public administrations in protection and promotion of rights of people with disabilities;
    • Acting as watchdogs to monitor people with disabilities’ rights implementation into practice.
• Supporting with equipment such as copiers, scanners, printers, laptops, and computers as long as the cost of such equipment is limited to 30% of the proposed small grant budget.
• Train national stakeholders on prevention and elimination of multiple forms of discrimination (disability, gender, age) to identify entry points for meaningful engagement of refugee women with disabilities from Ukraine in design, formulation, implementation, evaluation of inclusive refugee response, in order  to increase their institutional capacities to deliver gender sensitive services by applying innovative tools as design thinking, positive deviance, and the principle of intersectionality etc.

Eligibility Criteria

The applicant must be a Civil Society Organization (CSO) legally established and operating across the country. The applicant may apply if it:

• is a legally registered CSO in operation for at least 3 (three) years;
• is not on the Consolidated UN Security Council Sanctions List;
• is not being investigated for fraud, corruption, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation or other wrongdoing;
• has not had funding received from UN Women entirely or partly written off by UN Women;
• is not currently engaged as a Responsible Party (RP) for UN Women;
• has not been engaged as an IP/RP for UN Women at any time after 21 November 2019;
• is not a governmental entity;
• is not an UN organization;
• is not an established CSO with the capacity to be engaged as a Responsible Party
• has sufficient capacity to collaborate with various stakeholders: public, private and/or development partners (implemented at least 3 projects or initiatives);
• has sufficient financial stewardship, including having adequate financial policies and procedures in place to manage the small grant
• The applicant must be operating in one or more of the following areas:
  • Working with people with disabilities
  • Human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment
  • Humanitarian response, relief and recovery

For more information, visit UN Women.