Capacity Strengthening Grants for Youth-led Organizations in Africa

Capacity Strengthening Grants for Youth-led Organizations in Africa

Capacity Strengthening Grants for Youth-led Organizations in Africa; Hivos Southern African Hub aims towards an open and green society, inspired by humanist values such as freedom, dignity, responsibility and curiosity.

Hivos in partnership with SIDA and Ford Foundation manages the Regional Fund on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR).

The Regional SRHR Fund was established in recognition of the critical need for a strategic regional response to collectively address the myriad of SRHR issues in Southern Africa with particular attention to young people and adolescents as well as to provide an opportunity for donors to coordinate their support to SRHR in the region.

The Fund currently focuses its efforts on Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (ASRHR) in east and southern Africa (ESA). To do so, it supports civil society responses to a diversity of ASRHR issues that are relevant at both the national and regional levels using grant-making as the main mechanism of support. The Regional SRHR Fund seeks to support efforts that advocate for or take actions that can lead to improvements in the availability and accessibility of ASRH services and rights for young people and adolescents in the ESA with a focus on the most vulnerable and marginalized people including young women and girls.

This call for concept notes will focus on Objective

1: Capacity Strengthening of Youth-led organizations (both established and emerging).

Funding Information

Capacity building is needed to facilitate genuine youth participation and leadership, to enable youth to gather and control the knowledge about their SRHR needs and issues as well as to build the foundation for a cadre of youth-led organizations that can sustain their efforts over the longer term.To achieve this, the Fund will support organizational capacity strengthening of up to 20 youth-led organizations over the lifetime of the ASRHR program.
During 2018, the first cohort of youth-led organizations were identified and absorbed into the Capacity Strengthening program. Through this call, the Fund seeks to identify the second cohort of approximately 8 youth-led organizations to include in the program.
For the first round of selection, only a concept note should be submitted for evaluation.
Youth-led organizations whose concept note is approved will be invited to submit a full project proposal. Successful organizations will receive comprehensive capacity strengthening of their organizations, and project funds of up to $25 000.Project funds will be provided to selected youth-led organizations to undertake innovative
projects at to address the key challenges that young people and adolescents face in accessing sexual and reproductive health and services (SRHR).

Organizational Development Support

Organizational transformation is an intensive process and the RSRHR Fund and can be demanding for all involved in the process.

For this reason, the Fund selects a small number of youth-led organizations per year and works through Organizational Development Specialists dedicated to each organization over a 12-month period to achieve their transformation goals and build robust and well-functioning youth-led and/or youth-focused organizations.

Organizational Development Specialists will support youth-led organizations in the areas of:
Organizational values, vision and mission
Governance and organizational organograms
Program management expertise
Financial Management Systems (FMS) and procedures
Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and procedures
Organizational policies and procedures
Fund raising/donor mapping and writing proposals
Experience of working on ASRHR programs
Experience of advocacy on ASRHR and related human rights issues
Ethics and values of working within the ASRHR sector
The Fund recognizes that capacity needs will vary across organizations and support will be needs-based and assessed on a case-to-case basis.Geographic Focus
East and Southern Africa (ESA) with a special focus on Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Eligible Organizations

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Funding is limited is therefore the following organizations are encouraged to apply:

Youth-led organizations led by youth 35 years and younger working on SRHR in the focus countries (regional organizations or organizations with a regional focus are welcome to apply).
Youth-led organizations with clear value statements on diversity, inclusion and full SRHR rights for all;
Young female-led and youth-led organizations valuing feminist approaches to SRHR;
Youth-led organizations reaching the poorest or most vulnerable adolescent and youth population to increase their access to SRHR;
Youth-led organizations with a key focus on breaking down barriers/challenge social and gender norms around Adolescent and Youth SRHR;
Youth-led organizations with clearly identified gaps for organizational development and a willingness to improve on such gaps.Additional Information
The organization should be able to demonstrate an understanding of SRHR in the region and the connection to young people and adolescents.
Submission of a concept note does not automatically guarantee funding.
Review of concept notes will be done by a Selection Committee that will review concepts against the set selection criteria for an invitation to apply for project funds.Concept Note Submission
The Fund is seeking concept notes no longer than 4 pages which will be considered for selection to apply for project funding and inclusion into the Capacity Strengthening program.

Kindly note that the concept note will focus on organizational needs, motivation for inclusion into the Capacity Strengthening Program and a brief idea for project funding.

Full project proposals will be on an invitation basis.

How to Apply

Please download the concept note template via given website.

Apply by 28th July 2019