The Program Operator - Ministry of Investment, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic (MIRRI SR) has announced the LDI03 Call for proposal for project applications from the program "Local Development, Poverty Reduction and Roma Inclusion - a component of Roma Inclusion and Empowerment.

The objective of the call is to support capacity-building of smaller local organizations through the implementation of grassroots initiatives and the replication and enhancement of proven good practices in the field of local development and the social inclusion of marginalized Roma communities in fields of Health, Education, Employment, Housing, and Non-discrimination, with primary focus on Non-discrimination. 

The main ambition of this Call is to support local interventions close to/within the marginalized Roma communities. The scheme may foster the sustainability of institutions/activities originally funded in other projects (supported by EEA/Norway Grants or other public sources) and support capacity of local stakeholders, as well as to allow for replication and/or enhancement of outputs from these projects, provided that the intervention areas of support (Health, Education, Employment, Housing and Non-discrimination) are complied with. Projects shall actively engage Roma into implementation responding to the needs of the marginalized Roma community and promoting the partnership principle.

It is expected that at least 400 Roma living in a marginalized Roma community(ies) will be provided with services under the projects. It is also expected that the mutual relationships among communities (Roma and non-Roma) will improve, the level of mutual respect will increase at the local level, inter alia through the implementation of gap-bridging activities (at least one gap-bridging activity is expected under each project).

Criteria

The proposed grassroots initiatives are in line with the following:

• the initiative(s) is (are) community-based approaches and address localized problems (root causes),
• the initiatives are clearly defined in the questionnaire,
• the initiatives also organise and mobilise individuals from marginalised Roma community,
• the initiatives promote good practice in local action,
• the initiative(s) is (are) working towards systemic change, moving away from the symptomatic approach to a more holistic framework,
• the initiative(s) is (are) sustained action on achieving a core mission as opposed to one-off activities.

For more information, visit MIRRI SR.