In June last year the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs took the initiative to launch the MDG3 Fund and invest 50 million Euro in gender equality and women's rights.
Nearly six months later the fund has received overwhelming interest from organizations worldwide, showing again the great demand for funds for genderjustice.
The initiative for the MDG3 fund was taken at the signing of the Schokland accords of 2006, which marked (renewed) efforts and cooperation between the Dutch government and civil society towards the Millennium Development Goals. The fund came after a second critical review of AWID (second fund her report), showing that the financial capacity of women's organisations worldwide is not matching that of other development areas and is only very slowly showing any increase, if at all.
The MDG3 Fund was meant to give a one time financial injection into women's organisations and funds. Together with partners Mama Cash, Hivos, Cordaid, WPF, ICCO and Oxfam, WO=MEN is one of the civil society partners that have been involved in the MDG3 Fund from the start.
Not surprisingly the interest in the MDG3 Fund has exceeded all expectations and available funds. With the application period closed last May, a total of 440 applications have been received from 81 countries. Northern based organisations have submitted about a hundred applications and about three hundred are from the South. The approximately four hundred separate applications were submitted for a total amount of approximately € 700 million. There was so much enthusiasm for the Fund that the € 50 million budget available was over-subscribed fourteen times.
Unfortunately only a very small part of those applications will make final cut. In fact based on the minimal threshold of 750.000 a maximum of 67 organisations of all applicants would be eligible for funds from the MDG3 fund.
More than hundred proposals did not meet the threshold criteria of the required 750.000 euro. Something that had in fact been predicted by some of the civil society partners, claiming that this threshold would be much to high for most women's organisations to cope with. Besides the budget requirements, activities may not continue after the 30th of June 2011 or start before 1 July 2008 under the budget of the MDG3 fund. Furthermore incomplete proposals will be rejected. At this moment around 240 proposals will be rejected.
Only a 150 to 200 proposals will actually be assessed by the grant assessment committee based on a set of criteria. The civil society partners are not involved in judging the proposals. The grant committee instead consists of Foreign Affairs officials and two external gender experts who will determine the lucky few. Others may be referred to the civil society partners of the MDG3 fund to see if possibilities exist within their structural funding programmes for gender equality, which would be a positive outcome of the overwhelming interest.
Being rejected by any fund is always a disappointing experience for those who have invested their time and efforts. However the disproportional amount requested in relation with the amount available in this case also shows the need and urgency for more funds, especially of a structural kind, to become available to support women's organisations and gender-specific projects and programmes. So to applaud the succes of the MDG3 fund we cheer:
‘We wan't more!"
‘We wan't more!"
‘We wan't more!"
By Zairah Khan
Coordinator of WO=MEN
For further information about WO=MEN (Dutch Gender Platform), please visit http://www.wo-men.dyndns.org/index.php
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