UN Women Caribbean Regional Spotlight Initiative Small Grants Programmes

Deadline: 24-Sep-21

Applications are now open for UN Women Caribbean Regional Spotlight Initiative Small Grants Programmes to expand the technical substantive capacity of civil society organisations on ending violence against women and girls in the Caribbean Region.

The European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) have embarked on a new, global, multi-year initiative focused on eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG) – The Spotlight Initiative.

The Initiative is so named as it brings focused attention to the issue of violence against women and girls, moving it into the spotlight and placing it at the centre of efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In the Caribbean the focus of the Initiative is Family violence (FV), which is defined as a manifestation of gender inequality, created through unequal gender power relations, which overlap with harmful masculine stereotypes.

The vision of the Spotlight Initiative (SI) is that the rights of women and girls to live free from violence are protected, promoted, and upheld. The impact that the SI will work towards achieving is that all women and girls, particularly those who are most vulnerable, live a life free of violence and harmful practices.

The regional programme will complement the investments of regional institutions and contribute to the scale, sustainability, visibility, lessons learnt and replication of programming throughout the region. It will address specific regional institutional bottlenecks that impede or limit the reach of technical support to respond to and prevent family violence in CARICOM member countries.

In particular, the regional programme will support CARICOM and OECS as the two intergovernmental frameworks leading functional cooperation in the region. The regional programme will add value in several ways, including:

• Ensuring that countries without a country level Spotlight programme benefit from the regional public goods developed through the regional programme
• Supporting regional integration and functional cooperation both within and between regional institutions as approaches to ending family violence are mainstreamed into approaches to crime and security, health, justice and data and research
• Build capacities of regional level organisations to provide technical support to national institutions will contribute to sustainability
• Support the demands of civil society for inter-governmental and state action and accountability to end family violence.
• Provide models for Caribbean specific community approaches to support behavioural and cultural change.

Objectives

The main objectives are:

• To contribute to the reduction of family violence against women and girls and
• To improve access for women and girls to essential, safe, adequate, integrated gender-responsive services
• To ensure presence,accessibility and quality of services for survivorsof violence
• Capacity-building of organisational members/staff

Pillars

• The approach will be guided by the ecological theory that underpins the connections between family and society. The ecological model is seen as the best framework within which to address the causes, consequences, and response to family violence.
• The key pillars of the Spotlight Initiative Include:
  • Laws and Policies
  • Institutional Capacities
  • Social Norms and Behaviours
  • Services
  • Data Availability and Utilisation
  • Women’s Rights Groups, Autonomous Social Movements and CSOs

• UN Women MCO Caribbean is supporting implementation of the Spotlight Initiative in four CARICOM member states- Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago of six CARICOM Member States (the others being Belize and Haiti) to receive support from the Spotlight Initiative. UN Women MCO Caribbean leads on Pillar 6 in these four territories.
• Complementing the Spotlight country programmes in six Caribbean countries, the Regional Spotlight Initiative will focus on 4 pillars of programming:
  •  working to ensure institutions are gender-responsive;
  •  establishing comprehensive and evidence based prevention programmes aimed at changing social norms and gender stereotypes;
  •  promoting the collection and use of quality, comparable data to inform public policy, advocacy, policy making, and delivery of complimentary services to improve prevention; and
  •  supporting autonomous women’s movements to influence, and monitor policy and to ensure accountability.

Funding Information

• Category 1: Ceiling of USD 25,000 per organisation
• Category 2: Ceiling of USD 50,000 per organisation

Eligibility Criteria

• The applicant may apply if it:
  • is a registered CSO in operation for at least three years; (women-led organisations are strongly encouraged to apply)
  • 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 an Implementing Partner (IP) or 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 government entity;
  • is not a UN organization;
  • is not an established CSO with the capacity to be engaged as an IP/RP;
  • has sufficient capacity to collaborate with various stakeholders;
  • has sufficient financial stewardship, including having adequate financial policies and procedures in place to manage the small grant; and,
  • past performance has been deemed satisfactory by UN Women (if it has received small grants previously or been engaged as an IP/RP before 21 November 2019).

For more information, visit https://caribbean.unwomen.org/en/news-and-events/stories/2021/9/un-women-caribbean-regional-spotlight-initiative-small-grant-advertisement