Third Round of Stop TB Partnership’s Challenge Facility for Civil Society

The Stop TB Partnership in Switzerland has announced the availability of $400,000 budget in total for its third round of Challenge Facility for Civil Society (CFCS). The CFCS works “to provide support to community-based organizations engaged in advocacy and social mobilization activities seeking to raise awareness and empower communities to become part of the solution in the fight against TB.” The objectives of CFCS including assisting community-based organizations by supporting them with small grants for increasing awareness and active participation of local communities to fight TB, strengthen linkages, address challenges in project implementation for organizations and bringing together different organizations for exchanging best practices; and it also works to enhance efficiency in managing the CFCS resources by introducing a competitive process in grantee selection, making grantees accountable and using evaluation methodology.” These objectives not only increase resources for TB but also improve interventions and build local capacities.

NGOs submitting proposals for this funding opportunity should fulfill the eligibility criteria. They should “have a basic management structure and processes in place; be solvent, with current funding sources for the organization clearly stated; represent and serve an identifiable community, such as people living with TB, MDR-TB, TB/HIV, women, children, poor/neglected communities, or people living in remote rural areas; have a track record of carrying out activities with tangible outputs and outcomes in the area of advocacy or social mobilization; have a clearly defined vision, mission and set of objectives; have links with other development initiatives; and provide community support at the grass roots level.”

Project proposals can seek grants between $5,000 and $20,000 but one organization can submit only one proposal. Application form to write the proposal can be downloaded from the stoptb.org website. Along with the completed application form, copies of NGO registration and national clearance certificates for receiving foreign funds should be submitted. Applications can be submitted by email, fax or by mail. Preference is given for submitting applications in English, but they can also be submitted in Spanish or French. Stoptb.org has plenty of resources that can assist in developing the proposal and it also has a best practice section which can be referred during planning the project.

The deadline to submit proposals is 10 February 2010. For more information, visit this link.