Deadline: Ongoing Opportunity

The Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE) and the Mellon Foundation are launching a new call for concept notes for small grants ($5,000 to $50,000) for organizations groups and individuals working with heritage around the African continent.

The grants are part of the Heritage Management Project – Africa (HerMaP-Africa) which is funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities in Place program. They will fund projects that focus on the protection of and/or promotion of local heritage for socio-economic development in the continent.

Criteria

There are three main criteria for these small grants:

• Sustainability – The focus should be on projects that will have a long-lasting impact, going much beyond the duration of the project.
  • Potential examples:
    • Protecting heritage sites from desertification by creating green belts, especially where such green areas can increase biodiversity, bring benefits to local agriculture, and encourage tourism.
    • Preserving/stabilizing/restoring and adaptively reusing a historic building as a community archive and event space
    • Research about public heritage landscape
    • Installation of solar panels at heritage sites that will generate income or decrease expenditure, even after the calculation of the service and maintenance costs.
    • Building tourism infrastructure, using environmentally friendly solutions and a good business plan underlying their construction, including a proposal for community use.
    • Direct interventions that strengthen social institutions, like traditional methods of mediation help communities discuss and overcome problems.
• Capacity development and network building – They encourage projects that will strengthen local skills and build closer links with peer organizations in the Heritage Management Organization’s network.
  • Potential examples:
    • On-the-job training in preventive conservation measures, such as clearing or fencing sites.
    • Exchange of experiences and expertise with other local NGOs in Africa, for example on shared issues such as desertification or erosion of sites.
    • Co-operative training on museum exhibition design during the creation of an interpretation centre.
• Concrete and community impact – They encourage projects with solid and measurable incomes regarding heritage protection and benefits to local people. Each project should provide clear indicators of the planned impact.
  • These indicators will depend on the type of work carried out, but may include:
    • increased visitation to a heritage site or program
    • financial benefits to the local community in terms of the increase in the number of jobs or local businesses created.
    • amount of money earned from tourism; money saved by solar panel installation; the size of the area protected from desertification.

For more information, visit Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE).