Issued: 21 August 2023 Application Deadline: 20 September 2023
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
The Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN) is pleased to announce the Kosovo Women’s Fund’s (KWF’s) nineteenth grant round. We invite member organizations to submit applications that will contribute to furthering women’s rights and gender equality. Applications should demonstrate how organizations propose to contribute to realizing the strategic goals identified by KWN members in the KWN Strategy for 2023-2026, towards supporting, protecting, and promoting the rights and interests of women and girls; involve a rights-based approach; and support sustainable changes.
KWN strongly encourages initiatives that involve advocacy on local and/or national levels. Advocacy can include meetings with officials, raising awareness about women’s rights, policy-oriented research, proposing policy changes, and involving citizens in claiming their rights. Initiatives must aim to contribute to produce tangible and visible results (e.g., new legislation, new services, document violations of women’s rights to healthcare, etc.). Please be aware that activities alone cannot be considered results of initiatives.
The types of activities eligible for financial support include: organize meetings with women and decision-makers, organize campaigns for advocacy and awareness raising, building the capacities of women and girls to advocate for their priorities, support women in meetings with policy-makers to influence changes in existing laws and regulations that concern them, policy-oriented research including reviewing curricula and learning materials and/or documentation of abuses of rights, proposing policy changes, public outreach on advocacy issues, networking/experience exchange related to furthering women’s participation and human rights, trainings, roundtables/discussions, and other advocacy strategies.
The types of action that are ineligible include: actions concerned only or mainly with individual sponsorships for participation in workshops, seminars, conferences and congresses; actions concerned only or mainly with individual scholarships for studies or training courses; purchasing of buildings or offices; purchasing of vehicles; purchasing of equipment (unless necessary for the successful execution of the project); and actions supporting political parties, groups and movements.
In accordance with the KWN Strategy for 2023-2026 and currently available funds, only initiatives which contribute and are related to the following KWN Programs, objectives, and expected results will be selected for funding:
Improve Gender Equality through enhancing the Rule of Law
- Objective: Women have improved access to healthcare.
- Expected results: More public officials, women, girls and men informed of women’s right to healthcare and violations of their rights; More women advocate for their right to quality healthcare.
- Indicators: 1) # Meetings between KWN or its members and public officials where women’s rights are discussed; 2) # Diverse women and men inspired to take action to advocate for their right to quality healthcare because they have increased knowledge of that right; 3) # abuses of rights documented by women’s rights groups.
- Examples of activities:
- Involving women in advocating for improved access to quality healthcare, including taking actions to demand quality, affordable healthcare be provided and/or to report violations of women’s right to healthcare;
- Collaborate with women to officially report abuses of their right to healthcare to the appropriate authorities (especially reproductive and maternal health), after raising their awareness about their rights, with expert’s support contracted by KWN;
- Utilize KWN’s research Access to Healthcare in Kosovo and other data available on women’s access to quality healthcare to inform advocacy and awareness raising to inform advocacy efforts.
Education that Transforms Gender Norms
- Objective: KWN and its members more engaged in advocating access to education that transforms traditional gender roles.
- Expected results: KWN and its members more engaged in advocating access to education that transforms traditional gender roles.
- Indicators: 1) # new initiative undertaken to advocate for more pre-school and childcare centres; 2) # Reports with recommendations for improvement of curricula submitted to relevant actors; 3) # courses monitored to ensure appropriate teaching.
- Examples of activities:
- Using KWN’s established methodology to observe teaching in the classroom from a gender perspective, with expert’s support contracted by KWN;
- Advocating at municipal and national levels to raise the awareness of more officials about the need for more pre-schools and childcare centres;
- Advocating for the improvement of sexual education in schools, and/or in cooperation with the Ministry of Education Science, Technology, and Innovation (MESTI);
- Monitoring pre-school institutions and childcare centres’ quality of education provided in accordance with pre-school education legislation and advocating inclusion of teaching towards transforming traditional gender norms;
- Collaborating with municipalities and/or MESTI to support teachers in improving their teaching techniques towards gender-transformative teaching methods and content;
- Collaborating with MESTI to revise and improve school curricula at different levels from a gender perspective to transform gender norms.
Only proposals related to these objectives will be supported. Other proposals will not be considered at this time. KWN reserves the right to fund any or none of the applications submitted, as well as to discuss with applicants their applications in line with the aforementioned categories.
GRANT AWARDS, SIZE, TYPE AND DURATION
Funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and co-funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) through the Embassy of Sweden in Prishtina, as part of the initiative “Further Advancing Women’s Rights in Kosovo II”, KWN anticipates to distribute approximately nine grants in maximum amounts of €10,000 per grant, totalling €90,000.
Initiatives are expected to begin on 1 January 2024 and can last up to a maximum of twelve (12) months from the date of contract signature.
ELIGIBILITY
In order to apply, organizations must fulfil the following minimum criteria:
- Plan and implement activities in accordance with their own organizational strategy;
- Undertake activities that contribute to the implementation of the KWN Strategy for 2023-2026, including programs on:
- Advancing gender equality through rule of law; and
- Transforming gender norms through education.
- Be able to provide at least 10% of the budget total amount from another donor and/or self-contribution (e.g., documented volunteer work). This 10% contribution should be reflected in the budget proposal;
- Have no staff members currently part of KWN’s Board or part of the Grants Review Committee (GRC).
- Plan to implement initiatives that involve advocacy, towards bringing about sustainable changes in supporting, protecting, or promoting women’s rights and gender equality at municipal and/or national levels.
- Plan initiatives that aim to contribute to produce tangible and visible results (e.g., new legislation, new services, reports about cases of violation of women’s rights to healthcare, monitored court cases, gender-transformative curricula, etc.).
- Have not been involved in corruption, misuse of funds, or mismanagement of projects or project funds; and have not received any official notice from KWN regarding such mismanagement of prior KWF-funded projects, prohibiting the organization from applying at this time.
All final applications must meet these minimum criteria during the KWF administrative check, prior to be being proceeded to the GRC. Applications not meeting these minimum criteria will be disqualified from the process.
This Call for Proposals and thus the GRC will prioritize funding for:
- Initiatives that engage persons with different abilities, minority ethnic groups and marginalized persons.
- Organizations lacking other funding opportunities from different donors.
APPLICATION SUBMISSION PROCEDURES
Applications may be submitted in Albanian, Serbian or English languages. The full application must be submitted electronically to the following email: grants@womensnetwork.org.
Applicants must submit the following documents:
- Application, using the KWN Application Form (Word format, attached and available here, and
- Budget Proposal, using the KWN Form (Excel format, attached and available here.
Please note: all budgets must represent an allocation of costs (which means co-financing by another institution) and / or a non-financial contribution (meaning volunteer work, donations from businesses, community involvement) in the amount of 10% of the total budget proposal. This should be stated in the budget proposal. KWF will consider wage coverage and operating expenses in cases where the applicant has explained clearly how this will enable them to advance women’s rights and / or gender equality.
Proposals submitted to KWN must be the original and sole work of the applicant organization. Plagiarism will result in disqualification of the application.
KWN will retain all materials and documents submitted by applicants. KWN will not use information presented by applicants for purposes other than review and will not provide this information to other persons or institutions, except when required either by Kosovo law or requested by donors.
Upon delivery of their application, applicants will receive a Confirmation of Receipt with an application number, signed by KWN staff.
ANTICIPATED TIMELINE
CONTACT INFORMATION
Request for Clarifications / Further Information: Applicants should submit their requests for clarifications by 15 September 2023 at 17:00, via email to grants@womensnetwork.org.
You can find the open call here, too.
