The Asia Foundation (TAF) has announced the availability of grants from the Afghan Women’s Empowerment Fund (AWEF), a grant project under Global Affairs Canada, Women’s Voice and Leadership (WVL) Project.  TAF is the implementing partner of the WVL Project – Afghanistan.

The goal of the WVL project is to support the capacity and activities of local WROs and movements seeking to empower women and girls, advance the protection of women’s and girls’ rights and achieve gender equality in Afghanistan. This includes increasing funding to local women’s rights organizations (WROs) and movements recognizing the global funding gap that they face. The WVL Project has three outcomes:

• Improved management and sustainability of local women’s rights organizations.
• Enhanced performance of women’s rights organizations’ programming and advocacy to advance gender equality and empower women and girls.; and
• Increased effectiveness of national and sub-national women’s rights platforms, networks, and alliances to affect policy, legal and social change in Afghanistan.

Fast Responsive Fund

The Foundation will provide Fast-Responsive funding to women rights organizations (WROs), networks, alliances, groups and individual(s) for short projects and events, to pilot innovative solutions promoting women’s empowerment at the community, district, provincial or national level or in response to immediate advocacy needs or action requiring timely and strategic responses to unforeseen events. WROs, women’s networks, groups, alliances and individuals are eligible for this fund throughout Afghanistan. Recipients of this fund do not necessarily need to be registered with the Government of Afghanistan nor do they need to provide financial audits of previous funding for programming.

Eligibility Criteria

Fast responsive funding will be awarded to WROs, women networks, alliances, groups and individuals which may not be presently registered with the Government of Afghanistan to pilot innovative solutions to gender equality, women’s empowerment or women’s rights or short-term advocacy campaigns in response to an immediate advocacy requirement. The following eligibility criteria will apply:

• Having a primary focus on advancing gender equality, women’s empowerment and human rights, reflected in past activities;
• Be governed, directed and led by women i-e women serving in senior leadership roles;
• Conducting programming/activities/advocacy representing the interests of vulnerable and marginalized women and girls, reflecting the country’s regional and ethnic diversity.

Selection Criteria

The fast responsive funding will support interventions of direct and immediate relevance to gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s rights and contribute towards addressing critical gender gaps or violation of women’s rights.

The Foundation will additionally seek to fund:

• Applications that include a gender equality component (e.g., including men and boys in programming); and proven ability to design unique projects to enhance women’s rights and empowerment in Afghanistan.
• Applications containing advancement of women’s cultural or social status in such areas as art, sport, technology as gender enablers for vulnerable and marginalized groups.
• Applications which support initiatives for women’s voice and leadership beyond Kabul, covering provinces with feasible environments for the implementation of this project.
• Applications addressing women’s empowerment issues and gender gaps in rural areas.
• Applications benefiting a wide-ranging reach of beneficiaries, including men, women, girls, boys, persons with disabilities.

For more information, visit AWEF.