Submit by midnight 31st March 2025 to unaburwanda@yahoo.com
Overview
Commonwealth Disabled People’ Forum is an umbrella of Disabled Peoples Organizations across the 56 Commonwealth countries. CDPF mission is to develop a unified voice for the implementation of Disability Rights and Equality for DPOs and disabled people across the 56 countries of the Commonwealth’. CDPF has constituted a Disabled Women’s Forum to ensure the voices of disabled women is amplified within the Accredited Commonwealth Women’s Forum with wider reach of women, established linkages and networks with mainstream women’s organizations and movements.
Since its establishment, disabled women forum conduct survey on status of girls and women with disabilities whereby the issues of limited chances for education and economic empowerment opportunities came on the top of the barrier to full enjoyment of their human rights. The forum defined priority areas to addressed identified barriers are 1) Education, employment and Economic Empowerment 3) Promote Gender Equity, 4) Health care services and 5) political participation. In addition to the five strategic areas, there are other three crosscutting issues of desegregated data by gender and disability, stigma and discrimination and accessibility that the forum ensure are addressed across all the forum’s interventions.
The forum is implementing a three years African Disabled Girls Empowerment Pilot Project 2024-202. The focus of the projects is to develop and implement innovative methods to encourage and bring about an increase in the effective inclusive education of disabled girls in primary education; increase in participation of disabled teenage girls who have completed primary/secondary education in job skills training projects that lead to meaningful self/ employment and to enhance solidarity of disabled girls in effectively challenging gender based violence.
The implementation of Disabled Girls Empowerment Pilot Project will serves as an opportunity for learning and developing tools for selecting and managing grass root projects in two selected countries. The CDPF women’s forum therefore is looking for two Project implementing disabled women’s led organizations in African Commonwealth countries.
Project outcomes
The outcomes the Project is seeking to gain are:
• Established working relationships among disabled girls and women led organizations and CDPF disabled women’s forum
• Strengthened capacity of disabled girls and women led organizations
• improvement in disabled girls ‘school enrolment, access to employment training and livelihoods achieved and reductions in gender based violence in community
• Eligibility criteria
This call for proposal is open to grassroots disabled women led organizations member of CDPF from Africa commonwealth countries with an innovative project idea to empower girls with disabilities through Inclusive Education, economic empowerment with the highest potential to build collective solidarity to challenge Gender based violence at local level. To be eligible The applicant organization might
• Be national or local level-disabled women-led organization from the Commonwealth African countries,
• .CDPF-disabled women’s forum defines disabled women-led organization as organization with mandate to protect and promote the rights of disabled women and girls;
• Have majority women at every level of decision making including board and staff
• Demonstrate that core work is in the field of disabled girls education, disabled women’s rights, gender equality, and economic empowerment.
• Be willing to participate in the co-design of implementation strategies , evaluation and capacity building in collaboration with the CDPF Disabled women’s Forum
• Be located within African Commonwealth Countries.
Selection criteria
We are seeking concept notes for innovations in inclusive education, economic empowerment with the potential to challenge gender based violence against disabled girls and women as a cross cutting issue.
The concept note that demonstrate:
• Locally led solutions that center disabled girls’ education, employment, livelihood and gender based violence prevention ;
• Key education, economic empowerment and gender based violence challenges that disabled girls are facing in the community that the project aims to answer and how the applicant plans to address it through which innovative approach, strategies and activities;
• Explanation of the innovation and why and how it is innovative;
• How the project can use contextual opportunities to influence sustained change.
• Approaches that have strong potential to go to scale if proven effective;
• Approaches where there are existing or potential partnerships with government especially at the local level;
• Intervention design incorporates partnerships building strategies to maximize the impact ;
• Organizational capacity to deliver the intervention and manage disbursed funds of up to £10,000 maximum per year
• Contribution to CDPF Disabled women’s forum evidence gathering
• Demonstrated local and national knowledge and networks for influencing change.
• How the implementation will uphold the high level of Value for money
Language
Concept notes must be submitted in English.
Grant Funding
Grant amount is £ 10,000 for a duration of up to 1year for inception phase and
Implementation activities with a clear start and end date. Grant funds are project support and not core support, although CDPF understands the need and can cover some staffing contribution of up to 10%. The grant agreement will be between CDPF and successful applicant organization. During the final stages in the application process and prior to signing the grant agreement, CDPF disabled women’s forum will conduct a comprehensive due diligence assessment on the applicant to identify any capacity building needs and assign actions to mitigate against the risk to the funding. This is a collaborative review and analysis of the selected applicant’s organizational, programmatic, financial, and operational capacity to implement the proposed project.
Application Process
Please read the concept note, complete provided format and submit it via the email unaburwanda@yahoo.com by 23.59 GMT on 15 February 2025.
Webinar sessions providing information on arising questions about the call for concept note will take place in February 2025. Further information will be announced on the CDPF website. Questions regarding the concept note application can be submitted via email to: unaburwanda@yahoo.com
CDPF Disabled Women’s Forum