EaP Civil Society Fellowship Programme 2024

In coordination with a range of projects and programmes, the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Facility project sets out to strengthen the role and increase the capacity of civil society organisations (CSOs) and activists in the Eastern Partnership to engage in the policy making processes and policy dialogue, promote reforms and public accountability, foster local democracy, local development and engage citizens in public debate.

Objectives and Priorities

• The main objective of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Fellowships is to support civil society activists or civically minded women and men who demonstrate a deep commitment to leading positive social change in their communities (including IT experts such as software engineers, data scientists, designers who innovate at the intersection of technology and the needs of their communities).
• The Fellowships will build the Fellows’ capacity to constructively engage with communities and authorities and contribute to reforms in the EaP countries. The Fellowships should be linked to the priority themes of the EaP1 and areas of particular challenging nature in the region:
  • Having a resilient, sustainable and integrated economy
  • Strengthening accountability, rule of law, and security
  • Ensuring environmental and climate resilience
  • Contributing to resilient and inclusive digitalization
  • Promoting participatory decision-making and social justice

Types of Fellowship

• There are two different types of Fellowship which make up the programme in this phase.
  • Community Engagement Fellowships
    • Community Engagement Fellowships are designed to support Fellows engaging in one or more of the following activities:
      • Collecting local evidence: supporting fellows to collect and analyse evidence on key issues of public service delivery at local and national level.
      • Involvement in policymaking: allowing fellows to gain expertise on specific policy issues, draft policy paper/recommendations and organise advocacy campaigns; helping fellows get access to government channels in order to better get their ideas across.
      • Capacity development: supporting mentoring and job shadowing schemes and involving fellows in training of trainers in order to train other members of their organisations, as well as members of other CSOs from relevant networks. This may also include, although not exclusively, job shadowing or study visits with CSOs in EU Member States .
      • Involvement in monitoring public administration activity and results: supporting fellows in developing a multitude of monitoring activities, including on technical issues such as public financial management, budget transparency and oversight.
      • Improvement of CSO accountability and link to constituencies: supporting fellows in improving the transparency and accountability mechanisms of their organisations and in better linking activities to citizens’ needs.
      • Cooperation between CSOs: allowing fellows to organise activities bringing various CSOs together on issues of common interest.
  • Civic Digital Fellowships
    • The Civic Digital Fellowships will facilitate Fellows to use their expertise to contribute to, develop or further promote and raise awareness about technological solutions for community needs. These Fellowships are designed to support Fellows engaging in one or more of the following activities:
      • Advocacy campaigns on issues such as open data, data quality, e-services for citizens, and budgetary transparency.
      • Improving the quality of data (such as making existing public data machine-readable or generating and publishing open and reusable data needed for further development of digital solutions for transparency and accountability in the region).
      • Developing new digital solutions addressing community needs, helping citizens better hold governments to account, contributing to the improvement of public services, and/or improving CSO accountability.
      • Promoting/rolling out and expanding the existing civic tech solutions that address community needs, help citizens better hold governments to account, contribute to the improvement of public services and/or CSO accountability, and building the relevant skills of the potential users.

Themes

For the 2024 Fellowship cohort, the annual themes are as follows:

• Support for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
  • The objective is to strengthen the resilience and self-reliance of both the displaced and their host communities, working with host governments and local actors to support the gradual socio-economic inclusion of refugees and IDPs. The approach aims to harness the productive capacities of refugees and IDPs by helping them access education, health care, housing, land, livelihood support, legal protection, and other basic services. Thus, Fellowship concepts which contribute to this approach in support of IDPs in any of the six countries of the Eastern Partnership will attract additional points in the evaluation process. Applicants should note that emergency aid, such as the direct provision of food, hygiene products, clothing or shelter for IDPs, is not eligible and cannot be covered under this ‘Call’.
• Improvement of CSO accountability and link to constituencies
  • For this particular ‘Call’ applications may also attract additional evaluation scoring for contributing to an improvement of CSO accountability and link to constituencies. Thus, under this ‘Call’ fellowship proposals that include activities to improve CSO accountability and building constituencies may receive an additional evaluation point. Such activities may include, for example, assessing and advocating for improved governance systems for CSOs, the development of ‘codes of practice’, collecting and opening CSO-related data, re-using published open data in digital solutions for enhanced monitoring/evaluation, making funding arrangements and financial management more effective and transparent, or the support to sector-wide stakeholder collaborations.

Funding Information

• Fellows will be able to obtain an average of 5,000 euros in financial support for their Fellowship.

Benefits

• Civil Society Facility project team will support Fellows to benefit from suitable e-learning activities and organisational/operational capacity development trainings/webinars. Furthermore, the project will continue to support the networking of the alumni (including previous generations of Fellows), through the organisation of alumni events and development of alumni actions and collaborations.

Eligible Projects

• The Fellowship programme will provide support in broad areas of project activities, including:
  • Evidence-based research or monitoring of how public services are delivered at national / local/ community level;
  • Using evidence to draft policy papers and recommendations for decision-makers;
  • Advocacy campaigns on issues of public concern;
  • Better tailoring civil society organisations’ activities to citizens’ needs;
  • Developing new solutions on issues such as e-transparency and e-participation, and expanding or upgrading existing technological solutions for community needs;
  • Developing technological products to contribute to a community’s mitigation of climate change or addressing other needs, such as those of IDPs and refugees in a community;
  • Cooperation between civil society organisations, including trade unions and professional associations on issues of common interest.

Eligibility Criteria

• In order to be eligible for a fellowship the applicant must:
  • be a natural person and not a legal entity;
  • be a national of one of the Eastern Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine);
  • be above 18 years old;
  • not previously have benefited from the fellowship within this programme;
  • have a proven track record of:
    • for community engagement fellowships, working (including by volunteering) either in a civil society organisation, including Trade Unions, cooperatives, or professional associations, or with a civic engagement group or initiative group and/or taking a leading role in his/her community by advancing issues related to public service delivery and accountability, and developing local capacities;
    • for civic digital fellowships, professionally contributing to the development of IT solutions and/or voluntarily developing innovative digital products;
  • have a good working level of English, as well as have appropriate language skills for the chosen location of the proposed action;
  • assume responsibility for the action proposed and show commitment to the action proposed.

For more information, visit Eastern Partnership Civil Society Facility.