Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF¡¯s annual call for project proposals is open from 20 November to 20 December 2017, after receiving the green light from the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF Advisory Board on 16 November. Project proposals may be submitted on-line in English or French, the two working languages of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ. Applicants can find guidelines, and lessons learned here. This is the Twelfth Round to be launched by Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF, which provides grants of up to US$300,000 per project.
Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF has supported over 700 projects in over 100 countries at a total amount of almost US$180 million. All projects are two years long.
Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF invites project proposals covering one or more of eight main areas:
Gender equality
Community activism
Rule of law and human rights>
Youth engagement
Strengthening civil society interaction with Government
Media and freedom of information
Tools for knowledge
Electoral processes
In this Round, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF particularly welcomes proposals in the areas of gender; rule of law; media; or electoral processes focusing on elections scheduled for 2020 at then earliest.
In 2016, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF received over 3000 project proposals. Project proposals are subject to a highly rigorous and competitive selection process, quality vetting, due diligence and lessons learned from previous rounds, with fewer than two per cent of proposals chosen for funding. A team of international assessors score each proposal against 10 set criteria and produce a long list. To narrow down the list further, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Resident Coordinators and Experts of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF Advisory Board are invited to provide comments, quality vetting, and views on how proposed activities would fit in the overall context of existing Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ work in the countries and fields proposed. The same comments are sought from the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF Programme Consultative Group, making use of the specific expertise of each of its entities: the Department of Political Affairs, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Peacebuilding Support Office, and the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Development Programme, the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Office on Drugs and Crime and Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Women. Based on this collective input, the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF Secretariat produces a first short-list, expected to be confirmed mid-2018, after which the process moves into the next stage. Each short-listed applicant will be contacted with a request for a draft project document, which is in effect the contract between Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF and the grantee. The project document negotiation requires the applicant to provide a more elaborated project design, and involves detailed input from both Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF and the applicant, as well as scrutiny and due diligence enquiries by Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵDEF. Only upon successful conclusion of the project document negotiation will the project proposal formally be approved for funds disbursement ¨C usually after September every year.