Deadline: 03-Jul-2026
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund is inviting applications to support adolescent girls’ leadership, civic participation, and community-driven action in Nigeria. The programme will provide small, flexible grants, capacity building, mentorship, and visibility platforms to help marginalized and underserved girls design and lead solutions to local challenges.
Programme Overview
UNICEF Nigeria is seeking to partner with a qualified organization to implement a small grants and capacity-building initiative for adolescent girls.
The programme is designed to shift adolescent girls from being seen only as beneficiaries to being recognized as leaders, decision-makers, and community change-makers.
The initiative will provide small, flexible funding directly to adolescent girls while also offering leadership training, mentorship, safeguarding support, and platforms for visibility and influence.
Programme Purpose
The purpose of the programme is to strengthen adolescent girls’ leadership and participation in community action.
It aims to help girls identify local challenges, design practical solutions, lead community-level initiatives, build confidence, and participate more actively in decision-making processes.
The programme prioritizes girls from marginalized and underserved communities who often have limited access to safe leadership opportunities, mentorship, funding, and public platforms.
Indicative Budget
The indicative budget for the programme is 100,000.
This funding will support small grants, capacity building, mentorship, implementation support, safeguarding systems, fiduciary oversight, learning activities, and community-level action led by adolescent girls.
Strategic Alignment
The programme is aligned with UNICEF’s global and national strategies for gender equality, adolescent participation, and youth empowerment.
The initiative aligns with:
- UNICEF Strategic Plan 2026–2029
- Gender Equality Action Plan 2026–2029
- Nigeria Gender Action Plan 2024–2027
- Adolescent Development and Participation Strategy 2023–2027
This alignment ensures that the programme contributes to broader goals around gender equality, girls’ empowerment, civic engagement, and inclusive adolescent development.
Key Focus Areas and Objectives
The programme focuses on adolescent girls’ leadership, participation, and community-driven solutions.
Key focus areas include:
- Gender equality
- Women and girls’ empowerment
- Youth leadership and participation
- Adolescent girls’ leadership development
- Civic engagement
- Community-driven solutions
- Mentorship and leadership training
- Girls’ agency and decision-making
- Visibility of adolescent girls as change-makers
- Safe and inclusive participation opportunities
- Support for marginalized and underserved girls
- Community action led by adolescent girls
- Capacity building for local leadership
- Learning for future scaling and advocacy
Who Is Eligible?
UNICEF Nigeria seeks to partner with a qualified organization capable of implementing a youth-focused small grants and capacity-building mechanism.
The partner organization should have the ability to manage flexible grants, support adolescent girls, ensure safeguarding, maintain fiduciary oversight, and deliver rapid implementation.
Suitable applicants may include organizations with experience in:
- Youth leadership programming
- Girls’ empowerment
- Gender equality programming
- Small grants management
- Community-based action
- Mentorship and capacity building
- Safeguarding and child protection
- Working with marginalized and underserved adolescents
- Monitoring, learning, and documentation
Target Beneficiaries
The programme will primarily benefit adolescent girls in Nigeria, especially those from marginalized and underserved communities.
Target beneficiaries include:
- Adolescent girls with leadership potential
- Marginalized girls
- Underserved girls
- Girls with limited access to decision-making spaces
- Girls seeking to address local community challenges
- Girls who need mentorship and leadership support
- Communities that will benefit from girl-led local solutions
Why This Programme Matters
Adolescent girls are often treated as passive beneficiaries rather than leaders with ideas, skills, and lived experience that can shape community solutions.
This programme matters because it places girls at the center of decision-making and action. It gives them resources, mentorship, confidence, and visibility to lead meaningful local initiatives.
By investing directly in adolescent girls, the programme supports gender equality, strengthens civic participation, and helps communities recognize girls as capable change-makers.
Small Grants Component
The programme will provide small and flexible funding directly to adolescent girls.
These grants are intended to help girls design and implement practical responses to challenges in their communities.
Small grants may support girl-led activities related to:
- Community awareness
- Peer support
- Local problem-solving
- Advocacy
- Civic engagement
- Safe participation spaces
- Girls’ rights and empowerment
- Community service initiatives
- Youth-led innovation
- Local campaigns or action projects
Capacity Building and Mentorship
The programme will include leadership development, mentorship, and training for adolescent girls.
Capacity-building activities may focus on:
- Leadership skills
- Confidence building
- Public speaking
- Decision-making
- Community engagement
- Project planning
- Problem-solving
- Teamwork
- Advocacy skills
- Financial responsibility
- Safe participation
- Communication and visibility
Mentorship networks will help girls receive guidance, encouragement, and practical support throughout the implementation of their community initiatives.
Safeguarding and Fiduciary Oversight
The programme requires strong safeguarding standards and fiduciary oversight.
This means the implementing partner must ensure that adolescent girls are protected from harm, exploitation, abuse, discrimination, and unsafe participation conditions.
Fiduciary oversight is also important to ensure that small grants are managed responsibly, transparently, and in line with programme objectives.
The selected partner should be able to balance flexible funding for girls with clear accountability, financial controls, and child-safe implementation practices.
Girls as Change-Makers
A core goal of the programme is to increase the visibility of adolescent girls as community change-makers.
The initiative will create platforms where girls can share their ideas, present their solutions, influence local decision-making, and demonstrate leadership.
This visibility helps challenge harmful stereotypes and shows communities that girls can lead practical and positive change.
Expected Results
The programme is expected to generate leadership, participation, and community-level outcomes.
Expected results include:
- Strengthened leadership skills among adolescent girls
- Increased confidence among girls
- Greater participation in community action
- Expanded mentorship networks
- Increased visibility of girls as change-makers
- More inclusive and safe participation opportunities
- Tangible community-level outcomes from girl-led projects
- Better recognition of girls’ agency and decision-making power
- Learning that can support future scaling and advocacy
How the Programme Works
The programme works through a combination of small grants, capacity building, mentorship, safeguarding, and visibility support.
The implementation approach includes:
- Selecting a qualified partner organization with experience in youth-focused grants and girls’ empowerment.
- Identifying marginalized and underserved adolescent girls who can lead community action.
- Providing small, flexible grants directly to adolescent girls.
- Offering leadership training and mentorship.
- Supporting girls to design and implement community-driven solutions.
- Ensuring safeguarding and safe participation throughout the programme.
- Maintaining fiduciary oversight and responsible grant management.
- Creating platforms for girls to share their work and influence local decision-making.
- Documenting results, lessons learned, and opportunities for future scaling.
How to Apply
Applicants should prepare a proposal that clearly demonstrates their ability to manage small grants, support adolescent girls, and deliver safe, inclusive, and rapid implementation.
Application Preparation Steps
- Review the programme objectives
Applicants should understand the focus on adolescent girls’ leadership, gender equality, civic engagement, mentorship, and community action. - Confirm organizational capacity
Applicants should demonstrate experience in youth leadership, girls’ empowerment, grants management, safeguarding, and community-based programming. - Define the implementation model
The proposal should explain how small grants will be provided directly to adolescent girls and how girls will be supported to lead local solutions. - Identify target beneficiaries
Applicants should clearly describe how marginalized and underserved adolescent girls will be reached and supported. - Design leadership training activities
The application should include plans for mentorship, leadership development, confidence building, and decision-making support. - Explain safeguarding measures
Applicants should show how they will ensure safe participation, child protection, and protection from harm. - Include fiduciary controls
The proposal should explain how funds will be managed transparently while still allowing flexible support for girl-led initiatives. - Describe visibility and influence platforms
Applicants should explain how girls will share their ideas, present outcomes, and gain recognition as change-makers. - Include monitoring and learning plans
The proposal should describe how leadership outcomes, participation, community impact, and lessons learned will be documented. - Align with UNICEF strategies
Applicants should show how the proposed approach supports UNICEF’s strategic plans and gender action frameworks.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Applicants should avoid submitting proposals that treat girls only as beneficiaries rather than leaders.
Common mistakes include:
- Not clearly centering adolescent girls as decision-makers
- Providing weak plans for direct small grants
- Failing to prioritize marginalized and underserved girls
- Ignoring safeguarding requirements
- Not explaining fiduciary oversight
- Leaving out mentorship and leadership training
- Providing unclear community action plans
- Failing to show how girls will gain visibility and influence
- Not aligning with UNICEF gender and adolescent participation strategies
- Providing weak monitoring and learning plans
- Designing activities for girls without giving them leadership roles
Tips for a Strong Application
A strong proposal should be girl-led, practical, inclusive, and safe.
Applicants should:
- Clearly show how adolescent girls will lead the process
- Prioritize marginalized and underserved girls
- Include flexible small grants for girl-led action
- Provide strong mentorship and leadership development
- Build safe spaces for participation
- Include clear safeguarding measures
- Demonstrate transparent financial management
- Show how community-level outcomes will be achieved
- Create opportunities for girls to influence decisions
- Include strong documentation and learning plans
- Connect the programme to gender equality and adolescent participation goals
Key Terms Explained
Adolescent Girls’ Leadership
Adolescent girls’ leadership means supporting girls to make decisions, lead initiatives, influence change, and participate meaningfully in community life.
Community Action
Community action refers to local activities designed and implemented to address challenges affecting people in a community.
Small Grants
Small grants are flexible funding amounts provided to support local projects, activities, or initiatives. In this programme, small grants will support girl-led solutions.
Girls’ Agency
Girls’ agency means the ability of girls to make choices, express opinions, influence decisions, and take action on issues that affect their lives.
Civic Engagement
Civic engagement means participating in community life, decision-making, advocacy, volunteering, or local problem-solving.
Mentorship
Mentorship is guidance and support provided by experienced individuals to help young people build skills, confidence, and leadership capacity.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding refers to measures that protect children and adolescents from harm, abuse, exploitation, discrimination, and unsafe participation.
Fiduciary Oversight
Fiduciary oversight means responsible management of funds, including financial controls, accountability, reporting, and transparent use of resources.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the purpose of this UNICEF Nigeria programme?
The purpose is to support adolescent girls’ leadership, community action, civic engagement, and participation through small grants, capacity building, and mentorship.
Who is implementing the initiative?
UNICEF Nigeria seeks to partner with a qualified organization to implement the initiative.
What is the indicative budget?
The indicative budget for the programme is 100,000.
Who will benefit from the programme?
The programme will benefit adolescent girls in Nigeria, especially marginalized and underserved girls who need safe leadership opportunities, mentorship, and support to lead community action.
What will the small grants support?
The small grants will support adolescent girls to design and lead solutions to local challenges in their communities.
What are the main focus areas?
The main focus areas include gender equality, girls’ empowerment, youth leadership, civic engagement, mentorship, leadership training, community-driven solutions, girls’ agency, and safe participation for marginalized girls.
Why does the programme focus on adolescent girls as leaders?
The programme responds to the gap where adolescent girls are often treated as beneficiaries rather than leaders. It aims to recognize their ideas, leadership potential, and role as active change-makers.
What should partner organizations demonstrate?
Partner organizations should demonstrate experience in youth-focused grants, girls’ empowerment, leadership development, safeguarding, fiduciary oversight, rapid implementation, and community-based programming.
What results are expected?
Expected results include stronger leadership and confidence among adolescent girls, increased participation in community action, expanded mentorship networks, greater recognition of girls as change-makers, and tangible community-level outcomes.
Conclusion
The UNICEF Nigeria small grants programme for adolescent girls’ leadership and community action is designed to place girls at the center of local decision-making and community solutions. By combining flexible funding, mentorship, leadership training, safeguarding, and visibility platforms, the initiative will empower marginalized and underserved girls to lead change, strengthen gender equality, and generate community-level impact that can inform future scaling and advocacy.
For more information, visit UN Partner Portal.