Confidence Building – Call for Applications

Confidence Building

2014 – 2015 Call for Applications

Confidence Building in the South Caucasus – a joint initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Black Sea Trust

The Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation of the German Marshall Fund (BST) are continuing their joint funding initiative to support confidence building activities of non-state actors in the South Caucasus and its neighboring countries. The partners are convinced that civil society can make a valuable contribution to the process of confidence building, mutual understanding and reconciliation between populations in territories presently of recently involved in (armed) conflicts. This initiative is designed to encourage grantees to investigate new ways, methods and approaches for fostering mutual understanding.

Program Description

The projects should be initiated by civil society organizations which can effectively engage target audiences within the population of the region in their projects’ activities. Organizations requesting grants must be legally registered in one of the following countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia and Turkey. The involvement of additional partners (especially those from the EU) is possible and welcome.

Projects working in the following areas would be especially appreciated:

•     cross-border initiatives for youth;

•     approaches to civic education or active citizenship;

•     approaches to reconciliation and peace that incorporate experiences from history and convey them to the younger generation;

•     the role of media in overcoming stereotypes.

A special emphasis is placed on multilateral initiatives and those that reach out to the neighboring countries – Russia and Turkey.

Projects should be exemplary, make use of novel and innovative means of building trust, and have a realistic and economical budget calculation.

BST and RBSG encourage applicants to be creative and bold. Project ideas can focus on creating various platforms (environment, music, sports, etc.) that bring together people from territories involved in conflicts, on facilitating contacts between state actors in the South Caucasus and the surrounding regions in non-formal settings, on using different media tools (traditional and/ or new) to foster mutual understanding, etc.

The average grant will be around 23,000 USD (about 18,000 EUR). Multilateral projects may exceed that amount in exceptional cases.

Application and Selection

The entire program administration is carried out by BST on behalf of both partners.

The Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation invite interested organizations to apply per the below mentioned contact information.

Decisions about selection and funding of the submitted projects will be taken jointly by representatives of both donors, with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation involved only in Turkish-Armenian reconciliation projects.

For the October 1, 2014 deadline, interested organizations are invited to submit project proposals only from September 1, 2014 until October 1, 2014, at 18:00 in Bucharest, Romania (UTC+3:00).

The projects must be completed by May 2015 and reported to BST within one month of the project’s completion. The maximum duration of the project should not exceed 6 months.

Read more and submit your proposal here.