United Nations Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) Gender and Youth Promotion Initiative 2020

Deadline: June 1, 2020

Applications are open for the United Nations Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund’s (PBF) Gender and Youth Promotion Initiative (GYPI). The GYPI is an expression of the Fund’s commitment to inclusive peacebuilding. It supports the empowerment of women and the advancement of gender equality and recognizes the important and positive role young people play in peacebuilding.

Through the initiative the PBF seeks to increase its peacebuilding impact and advance the implementation of the Secretary General’s Seven-Point Action Plan on Gender-Responsive Peacebuilding, Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) and others on Women, Peace and Security, and Security Council resolution 2250 (2015) on Youth, Peace and Security.

Thematic Areas

This year’s GYPI will focus on two specific thematic areas:

1. Women and youth leadership: Supporting women and youth leadership, representation and participation in peacebuilding processes and implementation of peace agreements.
2. Protection of women and youth peacebuilders: Promoting human rights and protection of women and youth peacebuilders and human rights defenders.

In addition, preference will be given to:

• Joint UN-CSO projects, projects implemented by national CSOs and projects that demonstrate strong partnerships with women- and youth-led organizations. 
• Projects that specifically target lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) youth.

Benefits

Civil society organizations:

• Grants from $300,000 to $1,5 million per project

Eligibility

• This year’s call for the GYPI solicits proposals from both civil society organizations (CSOs) as well as from UN agencies, funds and programms, in PBF eligible countries.
• The call for proposals is open in countries that are currently formally declared eligible by the Secretary-General to receive PBF funding in 2020:
  • Burkina Faso
  • Burundi
  • Cameroon
  • Central African Republic
  • Chad
  • Colombia
  • Côte d’Ivoire
  • Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • El Salvador
  • Guinea
  • Guinea Bissau
  • Haiti
  • Honduras
  • Liberia
  • Madagascar
  • Mali
  • Mauritania
  • Sierra Leone
  • Solomon Islands
  • Sri Lanka
  • Sudan
  • The Gambia

• All applicants interested in applying to the GYPI are advised to reach out to the PBF Secretariat in the project country for guidance. In 2020, the GYPI accepts three types of project proposals:
  • Joint UN proposals: with up to three UN entities as direct fund recipients (to be submitted by the convening UN recipient after receiving the endorsement from the RC/SRSG/DSRSG)
  • Joint UN-CSO proposals: with up to two UN entities and one CSO as direct fund recipients (to be submitted by the convening UN recipient after receiving the endorsement from the RC/SRSG/DSRSG)
  • CSO proposals: with one CSO as direct fund recipient (to be submitted by the CSO independently)

For CSO Applicants

In order to be declared eligible for the GYPI, CSOs must be assessed as technically, financially and legally sound by the PBF and its fiduciary agent, the Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office. CSOs need to meet all the criteria to be deemed eligible for this call and proof will be required at the concept note stage. In previous rounds, the Fund has mostly funded international CSOs and some national CSOs. They urge all CSO applicants to thoroughly check the eligibility criteria before applying.

CSO applicants must provide the following eligibility documents:

1. Proof of previously received funding from the PBF, UN, or any of the contributors to the PBF in the country of project implementation (for example a grant agreement). 
2. Proof of current valid formal registration as non-profit with a social mission for the duration of the proposed project in 1) the country where the headquarters is located and 2) the country of project implementation. 
3. Proof of tax exemption in 1) the country where the headquarters is located and 2) the country of project implementation. 
4. Audited financial statements of the last two calendar years, including 1) the legal organization that will sign the agreement (and oversee the country of project implementation, if applicable) 2) the signed auditor opinion letter. The letter from the auditor should also state whether the auditor firm is designated as a nationally qualified audit firm and 3) the activities and budget of project country.
5. Latest annual report that includes the activities of the organization in the country of proposed project implementation.
6. Confirmation that the organization has worked at least three years in the project country.
7. Explanation of the organization’s legal structure.  

Proposal Guidelines

• Projects must be submitted in English, French or Spanish
• Project duration is maximum 18 months
• Projects must set aside at least 5 to 7 per cent of the budget for monitoring and evaluation, including final independent evaluation and financial audit
• Projects must allocate at least 40 per cent of the requested grant to national/local civil society partners, in particular women- and youth-led organizations
• GPI projects must be a Gender Marker 3
• YPI projects must be a Gender Marker 2 or 3

Selection Criteria

Submissions will be reviewed against the following criteria by the Project Appraisal Committee:

1. Innovation
2. Conflict analysis
3. Peacebuilding approach
4. Gender / youth approach
5. Consultation and partnership with local actors
6. Focused interventions
7. Targeting
8. Linkages between project and existing peacebuilding priorities
9. Implementation capacity
10. Value for money

Application

The application process for the GYPI 2020 is structured in two stages:

1. Concept notes: Applicants should register and submit their concept notes through the online application platform. The deadline for submission of concept notes is the 1st of June at 23:59 New York time. A Project Appraisal Committee will review the applications against the outlined criteria and invite selected submissions to be developed into full project proposals.
2. Full project proposals: Applicants who were invited to the second and last stage will have approximately six weeks to develop and submit full project proposals. Full project proposals will require signatures by 1) the representatives of the recipient organizations 2) the representative of the national counterpart (e.g. Minister) and 3) the senior-most resident UN representative in the country (RC/SRSG/DSRSG). The Project Appraisal Committee will reconvene to review the full project proposals and make its final selection. 

Click here to apply.

For more information, visit PBF GYPI.