Got an idea for a project that aims to boost civic involvement in government decisions? The Commonwealth Foundation is seeking submissions for their grants programme. The Foundation in interested in supporting a pool of ideas for advancing societies and offers grants to help make these concepts a reality.
The Foundation believes in the power of stories and storytelling for social change and will award grants for creative approaches that have the potential to influence public discourse.
Foundation grants can add up to a maximum of £200,000 over four years in support of innovative projects and approaches that seek to strengthen the empower of civic voices to engage with governments, with the potential to improve governance and development outcomes through their active participation.
The selection process is highly competitive and rigorous; selected projects will have been designed to undertake work that has the potential to lead to one or more of the outcomes in the Foundation’s strategic logic model.
An internal review process, including long-listing by the Grants team followed by a short listing process involving all programme teams, prepares a final list of applications that is then submitted to the Grants Committee. Final decisions on which projects to support are made by the member states represented on the Foundation’s Grants Committee.
The Foundation is interested in supporting projects that strengthen civic voice so that it:
- Is more effective in holding governance institutions to account
- Enhances involvement in policy processes
- Shapes public discourse
Your project should address one or both of the following, and may include the use of creative expression to achieve project aims:
1. Stronger civic voices engaging in policy processes to hold government to account
Your project will strengthen the capacity of civic voices in contributing to:
- Monitoring government commitments and action
- Supporting the implementation of the sustainable development goals or other international agreements, and related local and national policy agendas
- Advocating policy priorities to government that address gender and other power imbalances, disparities and discrimination
- Strengthening participatory methods of engaging in regional national and local governance processes
- Raising awareness and advocating for specific policy issues
2. Public discourse that will support less-heard voices and enable the following:
- contribution to public discourse on development issues
- access to policy spaces and/or platforms with the potential to amplify voices and influence public discourse