2019 Call for Concept Notes – Development Impact Window – Canadian Small and Medium Organizations for Impact and Innovation – Selected Projects

Women’s Inclusion for National Growth Strategy (WINGS)
Implementing partner: Beautiful World Canada Foundation
Funding: $1.8 million over 4 years

The Women’s Inclusion for National Growth Strategy (WINGS) is a gender-targeted initiative that aims to address the root cause of ongoing systemic poverty among marginalized women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa. WINGS will empower marginalized girls and women to complete post-secondary education, giving them greater access and control over financial resources needed to secure ongoing economic equality and, ultimately, to overcome poverty for themselves and future generations.

A Community Approach to Gender Equitable Education
Implementing partner: Canada-Mathare Education Trust
Funding: $743,446 over 5 years

The project will help 150 girls and young women in the Mathare Valley slum, in Kenya, to achieve their goals in higher education, the workforce and their community by providing access to high school education and support that increase their chances of completing this education. The Canada-Mathare Education Trust (CMET) will work with their families and the larger community to shift attitudes and behaviours that create additional barriers for the girls and young women.

SMART RMC (Respectful Maternity Care)
Implementing partner: Canadian Association of Midwives
Funding: $2 million over 3.5 years

This project seeks to decrease maternal morbidity and mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan by increasing women’s access to gender-responsive, quality care as well as their ability to advocate for their sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Sustainable Development, Human Rights, Inclusion and Equality (SHINE)
Implementing partner: Canadian Feed the Children
Funding: $2 million over 3 years

The Sustainable Development, Human Rights, Inclusion and Equality (SHINE) project aims to enhance the empowerment of women and girls through implementation of sustainable agricultural and agribusiness-related activities in targeted districts in Ethiopia and Ghana. SHINE will economically empower 8,000 households, or approximately 24,000 vulnerable small-holder farmers (70% of them women and girls).

Djonkoli kènè, an Entrepreneurship Space for Women and Young People
Implementing partner: Carrefour de solidarité internationale 
Funding: $2 million over 5 years

The proposed project aims to improve community support services in entrepreneurship, a key solution to reducing poverty and inequality among women and young entrepreneurs predominantly from rural areas in two regions of southern Mali, Dioïla and Baraoueli. The effects of their economic activities will directly affect their families, approximately 5,535 women and 5,445 men, and indirectly benefit a significant share of their community through increased incomes and access to agricultural products.

Territorial Governance Tools to Promote the Emergence of Women
Implementing partner: Cégep Limoilou
Funding: $2 million over 4 years

The project aims to support women and youth in the Casamance region, in Senegal, to meaningfully contribute to the Emerging Senegal Plan (ESP) in terms of basic food self-sufficiency. It plans to achieve this objective by promoting the democratization of access to and use of precise geospatial data. Through education, learning and the provision of measurement technologies and public involvement, the project will enable a social appropriation of data and territorial issues by actors in the area of intervention.

Women-led WASH for Healthy Homes
Implementing partner: Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST)
Funding: $1,901,441 over 4 years

This project aims to improve the health and well-being of 77,348 women, girls, men and boys in 8 areas each in Abeshege district and Woliso district, in Ethiopia. The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) increased participation by women and men in gender-responsive, healthy household practices and decision making; (2) increased access to inclusive, gender-responsive WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) products in marginalized and vulnerable communities; and (3) decreased barriers to participation in education for girls and boys, including those with disabilities, in 16 schools in the Abeshege and Woliso districts.

Improving Reproductive Health and Preventing Child Marriage in Nepal/Vietnam
Implementing partner: HealthBridge Foundation of Canada
Funding: $1,929,382 over 4 years

This project seeks to improve the access and quality of reproductive health services for adolescent girls and women of reproductive age in Nepal’s Kalikot district and Vietnam’s Son La province. It aims to improve health and gender equality (GE) among adolescent girls and women as well as reduce the incidences of child marriage, a form of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).

STEM Education for Empowerment Project (STEEP)
Implementing partner: Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, International Development Institute (Humber College)
Funding: $2 million over 4 years

Over four years, the STEM Education for Empowerment Project (STEEP) will enhance gender equality and empowerment of 34,890 adolescent girls (aged 13-18) from targeted marginalized communities in the regions of Kisumu, Kenya, and Tigray, Ethiopia. This will be achieved through increased equitable participation of adolescent girls in gender-responsive science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and training, including supporting adolescent girls to transition to STEM studies at the post-secondary educational level and into STEM employment. This will also be achieved by addressing existing socio-cultural barriers to gender equality in STEM at the community level through strengthening the enabling environment for adolescent girls in STEM fields overall.

Empowerment of Women in Rwanda
Implementing partner: L’AMIE
Funding: $1,953,000 over 5 years

The project aims to empower women and girls in 3 targeted sectors in the Huye district of Rwanda. It will directly target single women or widows and children living in extreme poverty and will aim to implement a multi-sectoral approach to achieve results.

From Last Mile Into Possibilities (FLIP)
Implementing partner: Raising the Village
Funding: $2 million over 4 years

This project addresses multi-dimensional poverty through a livelihoods lens by increasing sustainable incomes and equitable access to economic opportunities for rural, ultra-poor households (specifically women and youth-headed households) in hard to reach communities in the Kyenjojo district, in Uganda’s Western Region. FLIP will partner with communities and local government district offices to implement community-based initiatives that see equitable household income improvement and empowered ownership of financial earnings and assets.

Women Veterans Reintegration in Ukraine
Implementing partner: Saskatchewan Polytechnic
Funding: $1,999,974 over 4 years

The project seeks to improve the socio-economic well-being of women military veterans in 4 cities in Ukraine, where most veterans are located: Kyiv, Dnipro, Lviv and Odessa. The project will address the professional needs of women military veterans by improving the capacity of key Ukrainian governmental institutions to better assist these women, namely through adapted skills development programs, career guidance, the adoption of a gender-sensitive approach to service delivery, the facilitation of entrepreneurship development, and the promotion of dialogue and advocacy for women military veterans.

Community Learning Centres for Women and Girls in the DRC
Implementing partner: Susila Dharma Canada
Funding: $1,904,902 over 5 years

The aim of the project is to increase the empowerment of women and girls who have been deprived of the right to education in 8 rural and semi-rural health areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This will be achieved by increasing access to basic education and skills training and by supporting the development of income-generating activities and micro-enterprises, while at the same time building awareness about women’s rights and gender equality.

Labour Rights in Ghana’s Palm Oil and Ivory Coast’s Cocoa Sectors
Implementing partner: Ulula Canada Inc.
Funding: $1,030,400 over 3 years

This project aims to reduce modern slavery, forced labour and child labour among farmers and workers, especially women and girls, in select districts of Ghana’s palm oil-producing and Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa-producing regions. The project also aims to develop an innovative digital platform to identify and monitor labour rights risks among workers and to distribute labour rights information to workers, especially women.

Agricultural Seed Chain for Rural Women’s Empowerment (CSAP)
Implementing partner: Université de Sherbrooke
Funding: $2 million over 5 years

This project is based on the belief that improving women’s networking, coupled with a mastery of climate-smart agricultural production techniques in the emerging sector of seed value chains, offers a competitive opportunity to empower rural women, reduce their poverty and promote gender equality. The ultimate expected result is the increased improvement in the socio-economic well-being of vulnerable women and girls in rural communes of the Koutiala region in Mali. The direct beneficiaries are 25,000 women and girls of legal age to work in Mali. Mali’s Ministry for the Promotion of Women, Children and the Family and Ministry of Agriculture, and authorities in Koutiala’s 18 municipalities (authorities plus about 30 cooperative and associative groups) will benefit from the project.

Agricultural-based Growth and Resilience Opportunities for Women (AGROW)
Implementing partner: Veterinarians Without Borders
Funding: $2 million over 3 years

The ultimate outcome of the Agricultural-based Growth and Resilience Opportunities for Women (AGROW) project is to enhance the socio-economic resilience of women and girls through animal, human and environmental health in 3 districts of Battambang province in Cambodia. It will directly support 4,260 household beneficiaries (70% female) and 20,022 (60% female) household members. It will indirectly benefit 48,429 people (60% female) in the 3 districts’ 12 communes and 48 villages. The project will also support 48 village animal health workers, 48 producer groups (1 per village) and 144 leaders (48 women).

Empowering Bolivian Women Through Sustainable Small-scale Pond Aquaculture
Implementing partner: World Fisheries Trust
Funding: $1,999,507 over 3 years

The 3-year project will contribute to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 by developing and promoting female-led, small-scale, family-based, environmentally sustainable aquaculture in Bolivia to help alleviate poverty of rural farmers, particularly women. The project will contribute directly to improved well-being for women in 10 municipalities in Bolivia as well as their families (approximately 5,000 families).