NGOs Wishing to Access EU Funds Must Keep Abreast of Proposal Requests in Media

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) wishing to access funding from the European Union (EU) for special projects are being advised to keep abreast of proposal requests in the media.

Programme Manager of the EU Delegation to Jamaica, Luca Lo Conte, told a JIS Think Tank on March 14 that several NGOs have already accessed funding from the organisation and that paying keen attention to its website and the press is critical to the process.

“We publish quite regularly calls for proposals. In order to participate, it’s necessary to be alert when these calls are published on our website, also in newspapers. We put in our social network; we try to spread as much as possible in our contact list,” Mr. Lo Conte said.

The EU assistance focuses on citizen security, corruption, reform of the justice sector, human rights, gender-based violence and poverty reduction, among other areas. When these calls for proposals are issued, it is usually under one of the broad thematic areas.

Mr. Lo Conte said that persons must ensure they adhere to the processes when answering to the call for proposal.

“We are a little bit bureaucratic in this, but this is necessary for transparency. The proposal should be quite detailed and also very rigorous in terms of budgeting and planning. It’s good for entities that approach the European Union for the first time to look for partnerships with more experienced NGOs in order to get support to access these funds,” he advised.

He explained that the partnerships are useful due to the competitive nature of persons who put forward programmes.

“What I recommend is to build partnerships in order to have a stronger proposal, because it’s a competitive process. Find partners that complement each other, that allow smaller entities to grow and bigger entities to have an even wider reach in more specific and difficult target groups,” he said.

In the meantime, Mr. Lo Conte said the EU is pleased to be actively engaged with the MultiCare Youth Foundation (MYF) as it works under its Citizen Security instrument to implement the BRIDGE Project.

The project seeks to prevent youth crime and violence by targeting at-risk youth, aged 15 to 29, in specific communities.

Mr. Lo Conte noted that the EU does not foresee any new calls for proposals under Citizen Security for 2024, as it is in the process of working with MYF for the BRIDGE project.

The MYF is currently in the field executing the 30-month project, which began in January 2023.

“For this programme that will end next year, there is no new call foreseen, but there will be a second phase of EU support to Citizen Security, and we hope that by next year or the year after, we can launch another call that will also engage civil society in crime and violence-prevention initiatives, especially in the most vulnerable communities,” Mr. Lo Conte said.

“We have other instruments; one is the human rights and democracy, and the other one is the civil society and governance instrument, under which we also launch calls for proposal,” he added.