Women as agents of change in the Americas

The total amount of funding available under the Women as agents of change in the Americas call for preliminary proposals is up to $30 million over five years. Global Affairs Canada may fund any number of proposals (or none) up to the maximum funding available.

You must submit your preliminary proposal through the Partners@International portal before the deadline. We will not accept any late submissions. Please read the portal instructions carefully and plan to submit your application at least three days before the closing date to ensure that technical difficulties do not prevent you from submitting your proposal by Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 12 p.m. (noon) Eastern Time.

Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy places women at the centre of development. It focuses on the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, which requires the transformation of social norms and power relations.

The submission of a preliminary proposal is the first stage of a two-stage application process. Funding cannot be provided on the basis of a preliminary proposal.

Your preliminary proposal must document the ways in which your project would address root causes and structural barriers of gender inequality and focus on one or more of the following:

1. multidimensional economic discrimination^{Footnote 1} and exclusion of women and girls;
2. gaps in governance and political representation of women (and their networks); and
3. the situation of sexual and gender-based violence.

The preliminary proposal must also demonstrate how it will ensure the project’s sustainability by strengthening the capacities of the local partner organization(s).

Should you be invited to the second stage of proposal submission, full proposals submitted by the date specified, following the receipt of an invitation letter, will be assessed on their own merits, not in comparison with others.

Be sure to review the instructions in How to apply for funding through a call for preliminary proposals before beginning your application.

Objective

Under this call, your proposed project must contribute to the achievement of this ultimate outcome: enhanced gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. ^{Footnote 2}

Your proposed project must also contribute to at least one of the following intermediate outcomes:

• enhanced and more systematic engagement of women in public leadership and decision-making processes in LAC, including on climate-change issues;
• strengthened prevention and response to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) by individuals and state or non-state ^{Footnote 3} actors in LAC;
• improved and more equitable access to employment and control over resources by women in LAC.

You may adjust the call’s ultimate and intermediate outcome statements by adding precision, without changing them, to ensure they are grounded in the reality of your project design, making them more specific in terms of the who, what and where of your project. Refer to Results-based management for international assistance programming: A how-to guide to ensure that your outcome statements respect Global Affairs Canada’s definition for intermediate and ultimate outcomes.

Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy states that: “No less than 95 percent of Canada’s bilateral international development assistance initiatives will target or integrate gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.” Priority will be given to proposals that meet the requirement of promoting gender equality and targeting women’s and girls’ empowerment in their design. Global Affairs Canada will determine the level of gender equality integration in your full proposal by assessing the project’s gender-based analysis and how this informs the expected outcomes and outputs, appropriate indicators, risk analysis, and the allocation of financial and technical resources.

Proposals should also clearly indicate how:

• women and girls, including those who may experience increased discrimination based on intersecting identity factors, have been consulted during the project design;
• the needs and priorities voiced and suggestions made by women and girls in these consultations have influenced decisions on the project orientation and design; and
• women and girls will be involved in the implementation and monitoring of activities.

Organization eligibility

Carefully review the following eligibility screening requirements, which we will use on submitted application packages for this particular call. We will not pre-assess or comment on the eligibility of specific potential applicants. To be eligible, you must meet each of the following requirements and, where stipulated, provide supporting documentation thereof:

• Your organization is legally incorporated in Canada or any other country, and you can provide proof of legal status. If your original documentation is in a language other than French or English, provide a scan of the original as well as a translation.
• Your organization is not a sovereign entity (a government of a country) or a multilateral institution.
• Your organization can demonstrate relevant experience in countries eligible for official development assistance by providing examples of two recently (within the last 10 years) completed experiences of implementing a development project in section 3.1 of the preliminary proposal. The projects must have a total value of $2 million or more.

If you are unable to respond to any of the above requirements, your organization is not eligible to apply under this call.

Project parameters

Carefully review the parameters of this call and judge whether your project idea will fit. We will not respond to questions about the eligibility of your project idea. You must be able to answer “yes” to all of the following statements in order for your application to be considered for funding under this call:

• Funding requested - You are requesting Global Affairs Canada funding of at least $2 million, and no more than $5 million, per project.
• Project duration - Your proposed project will last at least two years, but no more than five years.
• Cost sharing - You will provide at least 5% of the total eligible direct project costs over the life of the project in cash and/or in kind. Please see the Policy on Cost-Sharing for Grant and Non-Repayable Contribution Agreements.
• Project location - The geographic focus of your project must take place in two or more countries eligible for official development assistance within the Latin America and Caribbean region as listed in the Partners@International portal of Global Affairs Canada.
• You will submit only one submission under this call (either as a lead or a part of a consortium).
• Local partner - When the applicant or lead organization in the preliminary proposal is legally incorporated in Canada, or in any country outside of Latin America and the Caribbean, you must work in partnership with one or more local organizations that are legally incorporated in one of countries where project activities are being planned. You must complete and submit the Local Partner(s) - Information form.
• Non-profit project - The proposed project would not generate a profit for the applicant or any partner organizations (please see section 15 of the Terms and Conditions of the International Development Assistance Program).
• Application package - Your application package documents must be complete and presented in either English or French.

If your proposed project does not conform to the above statements, it will not be assessed because it cannot be considered for funding under this call.

Available resources

There are a number of resources available online to help you develop your application package. We strongly encourage you to read all of the following tools and guidance before beginning your application process. Failure to meet the mandatory requirements, minimum standards and deadlines detailed therein will result in your application package not being considered for funding.

• Backgrounder
• Assessment criteria
• Questions and answers
• Funding guidance: resources and tools
• Questions and answers about applying for funding
• How to apply through a call for preliminary proposals
• Partners@International FAQs
• Advancing gender equality
• Advancing Human Rights
• Environmental integration process – Development programming
• Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy
• Results-based management for international assistance – A how-to guide
• GBA + step by step

How to submit your application package

In order to be considered in this call, you must submit your complete application package to the Partners@International portal by Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 12 p.m. (noon) Eastern Time.

Your application package must include all of the following documents:

• Women as agents of change in the Americas preliminary proposal form (PDF form is compatible with Internet Explorer only; please submit completed form with validated label showing on first page.);
• organization attestation;
• financial statements for the last two fiscal years, signed (these statements should be signed by a member of the board of directors or delegate; if possible, audited statements are preferred); and
• if relevant, the completed Local partners - Information form (.pdf).

As explained in How to apply for funding through a call for preliminary proposals, submitting your preliminary proposal is just the first step in the application process. After we review your preliminary proposal, we may invite you to submit a full application package. Funding decisions will only be made on the basis of a full proposal.

Accessing and using PDF forms

Use only Adobe Reader/Acrobat to work on the standardized PDFs to be submitted with your application package. If you use other software, the data you enter may not appear once submitted to Global Affairs Canada, and the application will be considered ineligible.

If you are having difficulty downloading the preliminary proposal form, it is generally due to the type of software you have (or do not have) on your computer. Please read and follow the help instructions. If you have all the correct software installed, download the form to your desktop and open it directly in Adobe Reader; otherwise, other software installed on your computer may try (and fail) to open the form using your default settings.

Questions on using the Partners@International portal

Please read and follow all the instructions for using the Partners@International portal (linked on the right side menu). Do not open multiple windows within the portal as this may cause technical problems.

Do not try to register or make a submission at the last minute.

It may take up to 10 business days to register your organization. If you encounter technical difficulties while registering or trying to submit a proposal, send an email to partners-partenaires@international.gc.ca.  Please note: During the last two weeks before a call closes, the service standard for replying to your enquiry is three business days. Technical support for the portal is only available from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST, on Monday to Friday.

Questions specific to this call

If you still have questions about this call after reading the general Questions and answers about applying for funding, please send them by email to Interamerican-NLG@international.gc.ca by Wednesday, February 20, 2019, at 12 p.m. (noon) Eastern Time. We will not respond to questions received after this deadline, or questions on specific organizational circumstances or specific project proposals. Applicants will not receive emails with responses. Answers will only appear on the Women as agents of change in the Americas questions and answers page to ensure that all applicants have access to the same information at the same time.