PROJECT CIRCLES

Giving Women makes an impact on the lives of women and girls in need through project support. We work in many different areas depending on the needs of our projects. These areas may include

  • Capacity building (e.g. transfer of knowledge, skills or technical procedures to reinforce staff capacity to reach project goals)
  • Technical support (e.g. collaboration with the Project Owner to develop business or communication strategies, to design promotional or other communication materials, to review or to develop M&E tools or systems, etc.)
  • Practical advise (e.g. governance issues, legal queries, networking support, etc.)
  • Other forms of non-monetary support such as developing a fundraising strategy.

As a member of Giving Women, you have the opportunity to actively contribute to a project by joining a Project Circle (PC). A Project Circle is made of a Giving Women Coordinator and Giving Women members, who are interested in working towards specific objectives for approximately one year.

We invite organisations to submit their projects. Eligible projects will undergo a screening process in accordance with Giving Women’s selection and evaluation criteria. The selected projects are then presented to our members at a Project Evening, where Project Circles are formed.
Giving Women is not a grant maker. Although many of our Project Circles have raised funds for the projects they support, we give priority to projects to which our members can contribute their time, expertise and skills.


SUBMIT YOUR PROJECT

Organisations are invited to submit their projects, if they would like to receive professional support from Giving Women. We organise two selections rounds per year – in May and November. Please read our project selection process and criteria. If you think your project is eligible, please send your letter of motivation to contactinfo@givingwomen.ch. 

Once our Project Selection Committee has evaluated the letters of motivation and they feel the project fits into our criteria, we will then invite you to send in a full application form.

Application deadlines for 2019 have ended

Application deadlines letters of motivation for 2020 are:

10 February 2020

10 August 2020

 

Download PROJECT APPLICATION FORM and GIVING WOMEN’S PROJECT SELECTION PROCESS

 

 

SELECTION PROCESS

ACTIVE PROJECT CIRCLES

Lensational

 

The Red Pencil

Empowerment Lab

 

Actions en Santé Publique

Center for Girls Education

 

Association des Femmes pour la Planète

 

Equal Community Foundation

 

Discover our past project circles

Project description 

Lensational 

Lensational's mission is:
to empower marginalised women emotionally and economically through photography. Lensational aims to reach out to marginalised women in a self-sustaining way; we follow the progress of our students and bring their work and stories to the attention of audiences across the globe.

Project Objectives:

• Equip marginalised women from developing markets with digital tools and photography training. Through photography, they gain a medium of expression, a source of income, and a base of confidence.

• Challenge cultural stereotypes and gender stereotypes.

• Advocating for gender equality and specific issues within Bangladesh (such as safe labour conditions, eradicating child marriage).

Project description

The Red Pencil

The Red Pencil's mission is:

The Red Pencil brings the power of arts therapy to children, adults, families and their caregivers, as a pathway to balance and wellbeing, with a special attention to those facing overwhelming life circumstances such as natural disasters, conflict zones and long-term hospitalizations. Giving Women will be supporting the Red Pencil on their project in Chennai, which is directed at women victims of domestic violence.

Project Objectives:

• Our arts therapy programme seeks to provide women with an avenue to promote healing and restoration through the arts. Specific objectives of the project are:

• To address the traumatic experience and assist survivors in the healing journey through creative expression.

• To train the counsellors/staff in therapeutic arts.

• To implement the visual journal as a self-care tool for women survivors and a record for the counsellors and the Art therapists.

Project description

Founded in 2016, Empowerment Lab mission is to empower girls change makers with the core skills of the 21st century:

• Creativity: Empowerment Lab encourages curiosity and supports creative thinking

• Technology: Empowerment Lab is teaching girls programming skills

•  Life-long learning: Empowerment Lab promotes self-directed learning online

Project Objectives

Empowerment lab is a fairly new organisation, therefore the main goal at the moment is to become financially sustainable and scale the project.

Project description

La mission de l'Association Actions en Santé Publique:

Regrouper et mettre à disposition les compétences nécessaires au développement et à l’aboutissement de projets au service de la santé publique.

Objective du project: 

  • Améliorer les connaissances, la compréhension et les attitudes s’agissant du prolapsus utérin au sein des communautés rurales du pays.
  • Encourager les femmes à aller consulter en cas de doutes pour un diagnostic précoce.
  • Apporter un soutien émotionnel aux femmes touchées.
  • Faire bénéficier les femmes de conseils pratiques s’agissant de la rééducation du périnée (exercices Kegel).

Project description

Center for Girls Education 

Founded: 2007

Mission: To educate girls in the classroom and beyond

The project: The Centre for Girl-Child Education (CGE) works to advance adolescent girls' education, health, and empowerment in Northern Nigeria through innovative programming, advocacy, research, and strategic partnerships.

Adolescent girls need essential human, social, health, and economic assets as well as a safe and supportive environment to enable them to make a healthy, safe, and productive transition to adulthood. Unfortunately, the majority of the 600 million adolescent girls in developing countries are marginalised, and their vulnerabilities and constraints are particularly acute in West Africa. Early marriage and pregnancy in particular greatly limit the life prospects of adolescent girls. CGE aims to address these issues to improve adolescent girls' lives.

Objectives:

1. Increase girls’ primary and secondary school enrolment, performance, and rates of graduation;

2. Expand opportunities for girls to acquire a broad range of critical life skills

3. Multiply the number of girls making the transition from secondary school to tertiary training in midwifery, medicine, education, nursing and other careers

4. Dramatically enhance leadership opportunities for adolescent girls

5. Nurture a large cadre of girls trained in direct advocacy and media advocacy aimed at influencing government to adapt a range of policy measures fundamental to increasing girls access to schooling

Project description

Founded in 2006, AFP’s mission is to ensure fair trade and enable the empowerment of women working in the traditional local industry of shea nut collection and processing and ensure the livelihoods of future generations by reforesting the current population of trees to avoid the catastrophic economic impact of these trees ceasing to produce nuts.

Project Objectives

• Ease the hard labour of women working in the shea nut industry.

• Enable the empowerment of these women by providing training and other resources to ensure they earn a fair wage from the fruits of their labour.

• Give women access to medical care and education for their children who currently stay at home or work in the fields due the lack of funding.

• Preserve the environment and secure the livelihoods of future generations by reforesting local populations of shea trees and other endangered species.

Objectives:

1. Increase girls’ primary and secondary school enrolment, performance, and rates of graduation;

2. Expand opportunities for girls to acquire a broad range of critical life skills

3. Multiply the number of girls making the transition from secondary school to tertiary training in midwifery, medicine, education, nursing and other careers

4. Dramatically enhance leadership opportunities for adolescent girls

5. Nurture a large cadre of girls trained in direct advocacy and media advocacy aimed at influencing government to adapt a range of policy measures fundamental to increasing girls access to schooling

Project description

Equal Community Foundation

Location - India

Founded: 2009

Mission: To raise every boy in India to be gender equitable.

The project:

“Not all men are a part of the problem. But, all men need to be a part of the solution”

Violence against women is not just a women’s issue. It is men’s issue. It is everyone’s issue. Pointing fingers at men or accusing them is not going to resolve the problem.

ECFs theory of change is that if men study and debate the value of women with others that they trust, and if they are supported with tools to manage their behaviour by role models that they respect, then they will:

  • Reduce their own violent and discriminating behaviour;
  • Advocate an end to end violence and discrimination by their peers and others; and
  • Take personal and collective action to empower women in their lives and communities

Thereby accelerating progress towards equality by reducing the amount of violence and discrimination women face, and increasing the resources within a community that are dedicated to empowering women.