Deadline: 23 September 2022

What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale Programme is seeking full proposals from programme implementers in the global south to apply for a 3-year grant to scale up evidence-based violence and against women and girls’ prevention programming.

Building on the success of its predecessor, which showed that violence against women and girls (VAWG) is preventable, What Works 2 is a seven-year UK aid funded programme to scale up evidence-based, practice-informed violence prevention approaches.

Contributing progress towards the elimination of VAWG, What Works 2 seeks to achieve a measurable reduction in VAWG in development and humanitarian contexts, including for the most marginalised women and girls in all their diversities.

The What Works 2 Programme seeks to expand the global knowledge and evidence base on what works to prevent VAWG and how to achieve this at scale. It also aims to support women’s rights organisations (WROs) to be recognised as essential actors in VAWG prevention and improve access to funding to uphold the rights, agency and voices of women and girls in all their diversity.

Types of Scale

• Quantitative scale: increasing geographic spread or beneficiaries in same location.
• Functional scale: expanding the scope of an activity.
• Organisational scale: involving other organisations or creating new ones, or being taken on by governments / multilaterals / other donors investing.
• Political scale: expansion by influencing political interests to affect institutional gains that allow interventions to be scaled up and sustained.

Types of Violence

The primary focus for the funding is VAWG, with a secondary focus on VAC. Given the high prevalence and the robust evidence base on what works, prevention of intimate partner violence (IPV) and non-partner sexual violence are priorities for What Works 2. In addition, the funding seeks to address multiple forms of VAWG and the interrelationship between different forms, including conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) and violence in and around schools, workplaces, and public spaces. They particularly encourage proposals that seek to impact on more than one type of violence, recognizing that these often co-occur.

Funding Information

In funding Window 1, What Works 2 will award one 3 year GBP 4 million scale-up grant through an open competition call to organisations or consortia designed to achieve a measurable reduction in VAWG in development and humanitarian contexts, including for the most marginalised women and girls.

What they are looking to fund?

• Take effective VAWG prevention interventions (or elements of interventions) and expand them in the original setting (e.g. taking an existing project to a larger scale, such as from district to province); or adapt and replicate them in new contexts/countries.
• Deepen impact by implementing a comprehensive multi-sectoral package of effective interventions in a particular context such as district or sub-district (e.g. combining schools, livelihoods and workplace-based interventions) including integrating violence reduction and gender equality into local systems.
• Mainstream VAWG/violence against children (VAC) prevention and gender equality into large scale sector programmes (e.g. education, social protection, livelihoods, health delivery) to optimize their impact on reducing VAWG.

Geographical Scope

Projects should be located within Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Middle East and North Africa.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants are willing to participate in the co-design of research in collaboration with the What Works 2 Research Consortium. Applicants are willing to participate in an evaluation process.
• Applicants are located within the three priority regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Middle East and North Africa.
• Funding organisations are not eligible.
• Organisations are only eligible to apply for one What Works 2 project in each funding cycle.
• The scale-up grant is open to applicants either as a single organisation or in consortia. Where an application is submitted by a consortium, the following requirements apply:
  • Applicants could include a mix of WROs who are programme implementers, as well as INGOs, NGOs and SMEs.
  • Applicants in consortia must ensure that members include at least one WRO from the Global South, which will lead/co-lead the project’s design, implementation, learning, and policy influencing and benefit from technical and organizational capacity strengthening opportunities related to the grant.
  • Applicants are willing to work flexibly with What Works 2 on project design, adaptation, and assessments.
• What Works 2 understands women-led, WROs to be organisations that:
  • Have majority women at every level, including at the board level and across all decision-making levels.
  • Have a deliberate mandate to protect and promote the rights of women and girls.
  • Centre women and girls in all their diversity.
  • Acknowledge individual and structural gender inequality and gender norms as a core driver of VAWG.

For more information, visit https://ww2preventvawg.org/apply