Open Society Foundations’ HESP for Advancing Human Rights

Deadline: 30 April 2015

The Open Society Foundations’ Higher Education Support Program (HESP) is accepting grant proposals for projects that enhance the role of university communities in the advancement of human rights. Projects that address pressing, locally-relevant human rights issues and offer creative responses to these issues, fostering supportive and engaged universities which serve their communities and shape public discourses and values towards the advancement of human rights are invited. Projects shall approach human rights from more than a theoretical perspective and forge collaborations between university communities and civil society toward tackling pressing human rights issues.

Interested individuals and groups are encouraged to contact HESP with brief introductions of project ideas for further consultation prior to submitting the final application. Proposal submission deadline is 30 April 2015.

Grants will be allocated to projects with up to maximum USD 25,000 grant request.

Areas of Activities

1. Action research – Knowledge production on pressing human rights issues.
2. Teaching & Public Education – Developing and introducing human rights-sensitive curricula across the programs of study to offering trainings for practitioners, community actors and marginalized and excluded groups.
3. Community Impact – Dissemination and integration of relevant knowledge into activism in the human rights movement through a variety of community outreach activities. These activities will seek to transform higher education institutions into supportive and inclusive environments, imbued with the sense of social responsibility and service to the community.

Eligibility Criteria

• Proposals should be made from academic-community partnerships from any academic field and addressing any relevant human rights issue.
• Applicant and beneficiary countries can be – Argentina, Belarus, Botswana, Burma (Myanmar), Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Peru, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
• Proposed projects should be conceptualized and developed jointly and in an equal partnership by groups of academics and community actors, or by networks of academics actively engaged with the relevant causes and active in the community outside their academic appointments. Project leaders shall ensure that the voices of excluded and marginalized populations on the addressed human rights issue(s) are integral at all stages of project development and implementation.

Applicants are encouraged to seek relevant international partnerships and introduce diverse geographic contexts and comparisons into the conceptualization of projects. Involvement of international partners and contributors playing non-leading and advisory roles in projects is not limited to the geographies above.

For more information, please visit HESP Call for Proposals.