The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) leads the U.S. Government’s international development and disaster assistance and supports partners to become self-reliant and capable of leading their own development journeys.
USAID is seeking to fund the innovative application of promising or proven interventions that prevent and respond to gender-based violence across programs that address the access, use, control, and management of natural resources.
The Problem
Gender-based violence (GBV) is estimated to affect more than one in three women worldwide. This widespread problem takes a variety of forms, including sexual, psychological, community, economic, institutional, and intimate partner violence, and in turn affects nearly every aspect of a person’s life, including health, education, and economic and political opportunities. At the same time, environmental degradation, loss of ecosystem benefits, and unsustainable resource use are creating complex crises worldwide. As billions of people rely on these natural resources and ecosystems to sustain themselves, the potential human impacts are dire, with disproportionate effects on women and girls.
GBV and environmental issues are interlinked, and so their interactions are complex, diverse, and multi-layered. In some contexts, they form feedback loops where gender-based attacks, harassment, and discrimination worsens the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resources, and this environmental deterioration triggers new, more damaging forms of violence. In other contexts, preventing and responding to GBV unlocks opportunities for enhanced environmental action, as well as for women’s and community empowerment.
About the Challenge
Responding to GBV can provide opportunities for both enhanced environmental action and women’s empowerment, but tackling one issue without addressing the other is unlikely to succeed. USAID’s RISE Challenge aims to identify and implement interventions to reduce GBV in environmental programming.
This challenge aims to fund organizations to innovatively adapt and implement promising or proven interventions or practices that have been used to effectively prevent and respond to GBV in other sectors to environmental programming, or to integrate GBV prevention and response interventions into an existing environmental programming. The challenge will draw insights from other development and humanitarian sectors that have proven or promising practices to address GBV. It will incentivize partnerships between environmental organizations, local communities, and gender and GBV experts who can help bridge knowledge gaps and work to build an evidence base of effective GBV interventions.
We also aim to celebrate and spur a broad range of interventions that are sustainable and integrable into USAID and partners’ environmental programming and investments.
Why Participate?
For winners of this challenge, USAID will feature their interventions, facilitate access to funding and networking opportunities, and provide technical assistance to support the proposed activity in achieving measurable results and impact.
USAID will award up to eight Fixed Amount Awards (FAA) between $100,000 and $300,000, subject to the availability of funding. Each FAA will be funded based on milestones and an implementation plan that are mutually agreed upon. Grant-funded activities must be completed within one to two years.
Challenge winners will be announced in Washington, D.C. in November 2019.
Closing date: 8 October 2019