The Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF-SGP) has received core funds under the GEF-7 to support Ghana to implement its priority programmes. Accordingly, the GEF/SGP announces the 2020/21 "call for proposals" to award small grants of up to US$50,000 to Civil Society Organizations and community groups for the most innovative initiatives in the following GEF focal areas:

1. Community-based conservation of threatened ecosystems and species.
2. Enhancing sustainable forest and agroforest landscape management for biodiversity conservation.
3. Innovative agro-ecology models and mechanisms for conservation of carbon stocks in the forest and savannah land use.
4. Sustainable agriculture and fisheries, leading to food security.
5. Low Carbon Energy Access Co-benefits.
6. Improving governance of land management decisions and secured ecosystem.
7. Reduction of GHG emissions in agriculture through climate-smart agriculture.
8. Local to Global Coalitions for Chemicals and Waste Management.

The priority geographic areas are communities within the Black Volta Basin, especially in the Nadowli, Lawra, and Wa-West districts (Upper West Region), Banda, and Tain districts (Bono region), Bole, and Sawla-Tuna-Kalba districts and the West Gonja Municipal (Savannah Region).

In addition to grant making, the SGP will provide strategic services to civil society and community organizations by enhancing their institutional, technical and financial capacities; develop platforms and networks; and expand partnerships and resource mobilization for scaling up. The programme will devote 30% of its grants outside the landscape targeting innovative initiatives in the following activities:

• CSO-Government-Private Sector Dialogue Platform.
• Promoting Social Inclusion, including gender equality and women’s empowerment.
• Promoting gender specific actions.

Eligibility:

Applicants must:

• be local non-governmental or non-profit organizations operating in Ghana with valid Registrar General’s Department and Social Welfare certificates; or
• be community groups/ community-based organizations, and social enterprise organizations recognized by the relevant District Assemblies and Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana; and
• have relevant experience and proven records of working with communities and groups in environmental, forestry and or agricultural related activities and should be based or already have a working presence in the Black Volta Basin landscape

Submitted project proposals should:

• succinctly describe the problems related to the geographic area;
• explain how the proposed project objectives, outputs and activities would have a concrete impact and contribute towards the achievements of the identified problems;
• demonstrate how the project is aligned to the targets and objectives of the SGP Country Programme Strategy (CPS);
• show that projects are innovative, impactful and sustainable.

Time Framework:

Call for proposals are opened from the date of this advertisement until May 31, 2021. Applications would be processed as and when they are received and successful applicants would be notified immediately.

Please find details in the application guidelines here. For any further information, please send request to george.ortsin@undp.org or lois.sarpong@undp.org ; or write directly to The National Coordinator, UNDP GEF-SGP, P. O. Box 1423, Accra.

Proposal Guidelines

Please download it here.