Deadline: 31 December 2018

The Girls First Fund is seeking applications for grants to prevent and respond to child marriage and early unions.

The Girls First Fund is committed to reaching new and emerging organizations, as well as organizations with little or no access to larger donors.

Funding Information

In 2019, the fund will make one-year (12-month), core support and project support grants of up to USD $50,000 in six pilot locations.

Priorities

The Girls First Fund will grant to a variety of strategies and types of organizations whose work is critical to ending child marriage and early unions. The Fund is most interested in approaches that support local solutions within the local context and that illustrate how girls, their families, and communities are involved in the design and implementation of the approach.

The Girls First Fund is particularly interested in hearing from organizations that fulfill some or all of the following:

• Are girl- and women-led
• Meaningfully involve girls in decisions about program design, implementation, and monitoring (i.e. are girl-centered)
• Are creating a society that allows girls to make their own choices about their futures and enables all people to have the same access to rights and opportunity, regardless of their gender identity (i.e. are gender-transformative)
• Support local solutions that address the unique religious, political, economic, social, and cultural norms and drivers that contribute to child marriage and early unions
• Access the most vulnerable and excluded at-risk, married and formerly married girls
• Foster community buy-in to enable girls to participate in, and be supported by, their communities
• Have a focus on one or more of the following:
  • Girls’ leadership
  • Changing social norms, attitudes and behaviors that allow child marriage and early unions to continue
  • Improving girls’ access to and completion of 12 years of safe, free, and quality education
  • Improving girls’ access to sexual and reproductive healtheducation, information and services, including safe abortion (where legal) and post-abortion care

Eligibility Criteria

• Community-based organizations and locally-focused national or subnational organizations that work in the following locations are eligible to apply:
  • Democratic Republic of the Congo (Haut Katanga and/or Tanganyika provinces – ONLY)
  • Dominican Republic (National)
  • India (Jharkhand state – ONLY)
  • Nepal (National)
  • Niger (National)
  • Uganda (National)
• The Girls First Fund defines community-based organizations and locally-focused national and sub-national organizations as follows:
  • Community-based organization (CBO): An organization that is engaged in the community, works from within the community, is accountable to the community, and is staffed by people from the community. A CBO focuses on issues and concerns directly affecting the local level (neighborhood, city, district). They include both formal and informal organizations. CBOs are sometimes referred to as grassroots organizations or locally-led organizations. CBOs include, but are not limited to:
    • Community groups
    • Self-help groups
    • Women’s groups
    • Girls’ groups
    • Youth groups
    • Indigenous groups
    • Associations
    • Networks, collectives, and coalitions
    • Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
    • Civil society organizations (CSOs)
    • Charitable organizations
    • Faith-based organizations (must have a no proselytizing policy)
    • Labor unions
  • Locally-focused national or sub-national organization: An organization with an existing deep presence in, local connection to, and contextual knowledge of the communities where the proposed work will take place. It believes in participatory engagement and working with local information, local connections, and learnings to guide programming direction and strategies. It avoids a top-down program design. The head office and organizational leadership is based in-country; it is not an affiliate/branch of an international organization. It must be able to demonstrate experience of work in and with the communities where the proposed work will take place in order to be eligible.
  • Organizations that are not eligible for a grant from the Girls First fund are:
    • Individuals
    • INGOs
    • NGOs that are an affiliate or branch of an INGO – and/or – whose head office is located outside of the eligible country where the work will take place
    • Organizations with a known political affiliation, such as support from or to political groups
    • For-profit entities
    • Faith-based organizations which attempt to convert individuals or advocate for individuals to join or adopt a particular religious creed, ideology, belief, cause or view in connection with programming or activities
    • Research or educational institutions

How to Apply

Applicants can apply via given website.

For more information, please visit Girls First Fund.