Call for Project Ideas: EU-UNDP Initiative for Lasting and Inclusive Peace (Georgia)

Deadline: 15-Sep-23

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is currently accepting applications with the goal to sustain and improve the enabling environment for lasting peace within and across divided communities in Georgia.

Joint EU-UNDP Initiative for Lasting and Inclusive Peace (FLIP) will support initiatives created by experienced, but also and young and possibly less experienced local Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and civil society representatives who are keen to take the lead in locally-led peacebuilding. This can be accomplished through capitalizing on existing partnerships, expertise and networks of partners on both sides of the conflict. It can also be achieved by engaging new actors of diverse age groups, walks of life and ethnic communities. Proposed initiatives will address direct needs and find durable solutions through people-to-people contacts and constructive cooperation.

Selected initiatives will contribute to strengthening and sustaining ongoing partnerships and creating new ones with a deeper understanding of changing local contexts and needs identified on the grassroots level. The approach will be inclusive; mainstream gender-sensitivity and conflict-sensitivity; strive to empower youth; and try to engage the most hard-to-reach groups.

Purpose

The purpose of the call is to identify high impact confidence building initiatives between and within the conflict affected communities through inclusive and locally-led peacebuilding process.

Aims

Proposed interventions are expected to be in line with the following aims:
- Improve the capacity of civil society actors in locally-led peacebuilding process;
- Facilitate inclusive processes to increase the engagement of youth, women and excluded groups in dialogue and confidence-building measures;
- Promote sustainable conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

Priorities

Priority will be given to:
- Project ideas that search for peace-oriented sustainable cooperation, with a demonstrable positive impact on the building of trust between societies affected by conflict, as well as on the attitudes and perceptions that would help move towards confidence building and positive peace. FLIP will support confidence building initiatives among the communities split by the conflicts well as awareness raising on conflict prevention and peacebuilding within the communities of different ethnicities. It will also fund measures that explore opportunities to prevent potential conflict and/or crisis.
- Proposed ideas should suggest innovative, strategic, creative and targeted actions with clear vision of change and high potential of sustainability, multiplier effect and local ownership, including:
  - Initiatives that focus on targeted and in-depth interventions which have proven to contribute to conflict transformation with tangible results – i.e. professional dialogues in specific areas such as but not limited to health, environment, education, culture, gender-based violence (GBV);
  - Initiatives that give high consideration to interventions that demonstrate long-term cooperation prospects across the dividing lines and are well aligned with the UNSCR 13252 , the UNSCR 22503
  - Initiatives with strong analytical and/or academic research component; project ideas may come from CSOs as well as academia, expert community, think tanks, etc.
  - Initiatives that envisage intra-society discussions on current peace process as well as rethinking on conflict triggers and drivers in the past (dealing with the past), which may positively shape the attitudes and perceptions, change stereotypes within societies, broaden the base for peacebuilding and strengthen local ownership of peace initiatives;
  - Initiatives that explore new fields of peacebuilding such as digital and climate change/environmental peacebuilding as an important element to further contribute to people-to-people contacts and build trust between the conflict divided communities;
  - Initiatives that increase resilience of locally-led peacebuilding and peace actors amid a turbulent geopolitical landscape.
- FLIP thematic priorities are flexible as long as the project idea demonstrates strong confidence building potential. FLIP will pay particular attention to mainstreaming youth, women, peace and security perspectives in grassroots and civil society driven initiatives.

Funding Information and Duration

To ensure diversification of activities and implementers, the maximum requested funding per organization can be no more than 120,000 USD.
A funding cap for organizations with less than 3 years of experience will be established on a case by case basis by the Steering Committee. Co-financing or in-kind contribution by the applicant is encouraged.
Maximum duration for the project idea: 18 months.

Eligibility Criteria

Be officially registered as non-commercial, non-profit organisation;
Have sufficient administrative, financial and technical capacity to implement a project;
Desirably, demonstrate good track record of working with donors in the past.
While strict priority will be given to local CSOs, international NGOs are also welcome to apply; however, particular attention will be given to the cost-efficiency factor (INGOs are encouraged to search for co-funding) and added value of international standing. International CSOs can also apply in partnership with local NGOs. CSO consortiums, as well as newly established organizations or organizations with no experience of working with international donors are also encouraged to submit project ideas, as long as the other criteria mentioned above are met.
protection and economic inclusion of refugees and asylum-seekers in Israel to apply.

For more information, visit UNDP.