CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: INCREASING CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATION (CSO) RESILIENCY IN CHANGING CIVIC SPACES
October 16, 2019
Enabling and Protecting Civic Spaces (EPCS) — Illuminating New Solutions and Programmatic Innovations for Resilient Spaces (INSPIRES)
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: INCREASING CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATION (CSO) RESILIENCY IN CHANGING CIVIC SPACES
Purpose: PartnersGlobal, in partnership with the CIVICUS Network and other consortium members with support from USAID, is seeking applications from local civil society organizations interested in strengthening their resiliency in the face of potential impacts of growing restrictions on civic freedoms of association, assembly, and expression.
Goal: The Resiliency+ Process will take selected organizations through a structured assessment and capacity building process to increase their organizational resilience over a period of 12 months. Participating organizations will have a better understanding of their internal organizational vulnerabilities and will be able to identify and mitigate potential external threats impeding growth, endangering staff and reducing sustainability. Selected organizations will be paired with a Resiliency Coach who will provide ongoing accompaniment. They will co-design a process with the coach’s guidance to prioritize their top resiliency threats and will receive targeted technical assistance to increase their resiliency in those factors identified as most critical. Beyond selection for this support, organizations will also be eligible to apply separately for flexible response grants through the INSPIRES initiative to further enhance specific interventions provided.
APPLICATION TO PARTICIPATE IN A RESILIENCY+ PLAN
Application Deadline: Please email the final application (fillable-PDF attached below) to [email protected] by 23:59 pm EST on November 8, 2019.
Requirements: Organizations in Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and Serbia will be considered for the Resiliency+ process this year. To be eligible for consideration, an organization must have at least three years of operational experience, since the Resiliency+ Process provides tailored resiliency support and assumes a certain level of general organizational development. Additionally, it is vital for each applicant organization to commit to dedicating staff time to this intensive accompaniment process. The R+ approach involves a small team of staff from different functional teams from your organization who will participate in the assessment and capacity building activities over a period of 12 months.
Selected organizations must demonstrate civic space factors affecting their daily work, such as legal environment restrictions, financial constraints, negative narratives about civil society, and fragmentation of civil society. A diversity of organizations will be considered, including but not limited to rural/urban, male/female-led, and small/large. Finally, organizations seen as having the potential to be a multiplier in the civil society sector (network membership, function as intermediary support organizations, other roles), will be given preference. Organizations of various types and thematic focus are encouraged to apply.
An initial screening panel will review all the applications to shortlist them based on basic criteria of organizational development and geographic location. Shortlisted candidates will then be interviewed in order to provide more specific information and recommendations to the final technical review committee. A technical review committee will then recommend the final applicants to be selected as target beneficiaries. The entire selection process is anticipated to take approximately four weeks.
Click here for the full application.
EPCS INSPIRES seeks to increase knowledge and capacity to respond to growing restrictions on democratic freedoms of association, assembly, and expression. With civic space shifting rapidly around the globe, faster and more potent interventions are critical for bolstering local civil societies. Through this process, the consortium expects to identify which interventions and delivery mechanisms are most effective under specific circumstances in order to apply the lessons to a critical mass of CSOs and networks globally, resulting in improved resilience to closing space threats on a sectoral level. More information can be found on the INSPIRES website: www.inspiresconsortium.org.