Oxfam is a global movement for change that empowers people to create a secure future, just and free from poverty. We believe that everyone has a right to safety, security, a livelihood, and a say in decisions that affect them. In Uganda, our Vision is to see Uganda free of inequality and Injustice: A society where people, particularly women and young people, claim and exercise their rights and responsibilities and influence decisions that affect their lives. Our work is guided by the Country Strategic Framework (CSF) (2021-2030), organized around four themes: Governance and Accountability, Resilient Livelihoods, Humanitarian preparedness and response and Gender Justice and Women's Rights. All the themes work towards influencing policy and practice, youth and women empowerment, inclusive participation in decision-making at various levels, and capacity strengthening of national and local actors. All our work is guided by six core values: Empowerment, Accountability, Inclusiveness, Equality, Solidarity and Courage.
War Child Canada (WCC) is a global humanitarian organization dedicated to driving generational change in communities affected by conflict. With over 500 staff across 16 offices in six countries, WCC works in some of the world’s most challenging environments to support the most vulnerable children. WCC’s locally driven model invests in education, economic opportunities, and justice to break cycles of violence and build lasting peace. WCC is committed to partnering with communities to create sustainable, transformative change.
Note: All offers will be subject to satisfactory references and may be subject to appropriate screening.
Project Background
The Geared for Success (GFS) project is a five-year, CAD $13.8 million, gender-responsive initiative aimed at enhancing equitable and inclusive learning outcomes for refugee, internally displaced and host community children and youth, particularly girls and adolescent girls, living in South Sudan and Uganda. As part of Global Affairs Canada (GAC) “Together for Learning” campaign, the GFS project works towards supporting community-based organizations (CBOs) with financial and technical support in order to enhance their programming aimed at enabling access to gender-responsive education for refugee, internally displaced and host children in targeted communities.
The project is implemented by War Child Canada (WCC) and Oxfam Canada (OCA) in close collaboration with six local implementing partners in South Sudan and Uganda. The contribution agreement between WCC, OCA, and GAC was signed on August 9, 2022. In early 2023, a no-cost extension (NCE) was granted to extend the project until March 2029.
The project uses the Canadian Government’s Results-Based Management (RBM) approach to assess project progress and achievements. The ultimate outcome of the project is: “enhanced equitable and inclusive learning outcomes for ‘refugee, internally displaced and host community children and youth, particularly girls and adolescent girls’ in the districts of Yumbe, Terego and Obongi in Uganda.
The intermediate outcomes of the project are outlined below.
- Outcome 1100: Improved performance of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) working on gender-responsive education
- Outcome 1200: Increased access to gender-responsive quality education for refugees and internally displaced children and youth, particularly girls and adolescent girls, enabled by CBOs
- Outcome 1300: Enhanced collective action of CBOs to advance the right to gender- responsive quality education for refugee and internally displaced children and youth, particularly vulnerable groups
GFS will achieve this outcome by increasing access to gender responsive quality education for ultimate project participants, driven by local refugee-led organizations and internally displaced people (IDP)-led community-based organizations. The project CBOs are a mix of these organizations.
CBOs are on the front lines of providing essential education services for refugees and IDPs. To ensure that CBOs are ‘geared for success’, this project will facilitate and provide technical and financial resources to strengthen their capacity -with more women’s leadership and community support, allowing them to enable access to education and to successfully advocate for the right to education for ultimate project participants.
The project under pillar two will provide financial support and small grants to targeted CBOs under the project and the network members engaged by RELON to improve their performance as resilient and adaptable gender-just organizations, while expanding the reach and comprehensiveness of project outcomes.
Call for Proposals
This call for proposals seeks expressions of interest from Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), including Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs), working in Uganda to implement responsive and adaptive education activities. These grants are designed to address unforeseen events such as localized conflicts, natural disasters (e.g., flooding), sudden population displacements, or disease outbreaks (e.g., COVID-19, Ebola). The Response Grants serve as a crisis modifier to enable quick and adaptive interventions that strengthen gender-responsive education programming for children and youth in refugee and host communities.
Objectives of the Grant
• Support education interventions that address emerging and unforeseen challenges in refugee and host communities.
• Strengthen access to quality, gender-responsive education for children and youth affected by crises.
• Enable CBOs to implement context-specific, short-term, and flexible solutions to education issues exacerbated by crises.
Eligibility for funding and Criteria for evaluation
Response grants are open to applications from both GFS project core 3 partners in Uganda and RELON member organizations who are engaged under the project.
Criteria for evaluation may include, but are not limited to:
- Concept demonstrates adaptive activities in the event of conflicts or health pandemics to address context-specific education gaps (aligned with the GFS project scope).
- The emerging need (s) or issue is education-related and requires urgent mitigation and/or solution, which cannot be covered by other funding sources, and can be completed in a short timeframe.
- Although the funding will be activated in response to unanticipated events, strategic activities that increase the likelihood of success in the other grant mechanisms and Pillar 2 in general will be prioritized.
- Cost-effectiveness, effectiveness (financial, management, and technical capacity of grantee to implement, reach), and the anticipated impact will be considered.
Scope and focus of the call for proposals
Thematic area: Mitigating any threats towards achieving gender responsive education outcomes in Uganda.
This response grants provide small, flexible grants to implement new adaptive activities in response to unforeseen events in project locations, such as and including localized conflict outbreaks, flooding, sudden population displacement or disease outbreaks (COVID, Ebola, etc.). They are envisaged to be quick, of short duration, and serve as a crisis modifier to facilitate the use of adaptive and responsive approaches to emerging challenges. Responsive projects or actions funded by this grant will primarily focus on strengthening gender-responsive education programming for refugee and host community children and youth and will have a maximum duration of up to one year. Specifically, each grant will support CBOs that are in the best position to address context-specific education issues and needs that emerge as a result of unforeseen events. Response grants will be open to only the partners under the GFS project and the network members (including WROs)engaged by RELON who were trained on CAT and are also engaged by WCC.
Proposal Design
A focus on responding quickly to emerging threats and challenges to education in order to strengthen gender-responsive education programming for refugee and host community children and youth within the applications is required as part of the proposal design, methodology, and dissemination plan. The proposals should outline to responses aimed at mitigating the impact of threats and providing lifesaving services to women, girls and other hard-to reach groups. Furthermore, strategies and activities tailoring the response to engage these groups should be clearly described in the applications. The exploratory ideas to be supported under this RFA must include primary and secondary audiences with a clear sample size and geographical locations/knowledge sources, and adhere to the highest ethical standards.
The proposals should follow the attached proposal template, which provides section-by-section scoring details. Proposing a project duration beyond the maximum duration specified below may result in negative scoring of the application. Applications beyond the thematic scope of this RFA will not be considered. In order for applications to qualify for the screening process, applicants must strictly comply with the application templates and guiding notes attached in Appendix I.
Grant Fund and Duration - April 2025 – March 2026
The response grants aim to support projects ranging between CAD 15,000 – 60,000. The SMGC will only accept applications for smaller grants of maximum 3-12 months for this cycle. No long-term project applications will be accepted under this grant cycle, although these may be sought in future grant cycles.
This funding will be awarded as grants. We will not award any cooperative agreements. The operating procedures of grant management will be guided under the policy purview of SPO and Oxfam, and will be in line with additional donor requirements of GAC.
Deadlines, Multiple Applications, and Geographic Focus
The deadline for this RFA is 1st April 2025 to 30th April 2025 Grant applications will undergo a thorough review process and grants will be awarded in May 2025. Short-term proposals (of 3-12 months) with realistic and achievable actions and results within this time period are critical, as time extensions are unlikely for this grant cycle.
Applicants may submit only one grant application at a time. If a grant application is not successful, the applicant may submit a subsequent application in the next grant cycle when announced. In addition, each organization or entity can only be awarded a maximum of two grants during the Geared for Success project. Multiple grants (above two) to the same applicant will not be awarded.
GFS will support grant projects in Yumbe, Terego and Obongi districts, in the refugee settlements and host communities of Bidibidi, Imvepi and Palorinya respectively.
Technical and Financial Proposal
It is strongly encouraged that applications follow the template provided in Appendix I and give due attention to sections for scoring purposes. The criteria for scoring is as below.
Award of Contract
The contract will be awarded to organizations following internal review and approvals, including negotiations if necessary. The organization may be required to provide additional information and/or amend its proposal. The aim is to reach an agreement on all points for contracting. The selected organization/individual applicant(s) is expected to commence the assignment on the date and at the location as specified in the Terms of Reference (TOR).
Negotiations will include a discussion on the proposed methodology, staffing, costing, any suggestions made by the organization(s)/individuals to improve the application. OiP and the applicant will then work out the final application, staffing, logistics, and reporting. The agreed work plan, cost and the final application will then be incorporated in the contract document.
Confidentiality
Information related to the evaluation of proposals and recommendations concerning awards shall not be disclosed to the organizations who submitted the proposals or to other persons not officially concerned with the process until the successful organization has been awarded the contract.
Proposal Submission Process
Interested applicants should submit their detailed financial and technical proposals in line with the above RFA by 30th April 2025. The proposal submission will be accepted online. No proposal submission via post is acceptable.
Please email your submissions as Word/PDF documents to the following email address: ugandalogistics@oxfam.org
Appendix I – Technical Proposal & Guiding Notes
This document is to be completed by the organization interested in partnering with Oxfam and WCC for this opportunity.
- Completion of this document does not infer any contractual agreement between Oxfam and your organization but will help us to assess your organization’s ability and compatibility to work with us as an implementing partner.
- We are seeking minimum information from you at this stage. Any further details may be requested in case your application gets shortlisted.
1. Details
i. Organization / Individual applicant’s name
ii. Contact Person Name (only applicable to organizations)
iii. Position
iv. Address (Post Code)
v. Telephone
vi. Mobile
vii. Email
viii. Website (applicable to organizations)
ix. Type of Organization
x. Organization Registration Details
Section 1. Technical Approach and Methodology
The technical approach must demonstrate a clear alignment with the scope and focus of thematic areas . The exploratory methods should be in line with gender-responsive education. WROs and emerging, young women practitioners (applicants) are encouraged to apply. This section must include:
1.1 Organizational affiliation (if applicable in case of individual practitioners)
1.2 Brief overview of the situation to be analyzed and rationale, especially in relation to unforeseen, emerging issue affecting gender responsive education and access for refugee youth and IDPs.
1.3 Audiences/participant profile, including target participants disaggregated by gender, age, sample size, and geographic location.
1.4 Proposed methodology, including a consideration of gender-responsive education approaches that examine power and gender relations and reflect the short, 3- 12-month scope of this grant.
1.5 Synthesis and analysis
1.6 Expected results and significance
1.7 Key milestones and timeline
Section 2. Ethical Considerations
Clearly outline what key ethical issues will be considered and which ethical guidelines will be followed, the risks and benefits for participants and/or applicants and mitigation plan, how participants’ confidentiality and anonymity will be protected, whether or not they will be compensated, where the body of knowledge will be housed and how, among other considerations.
Section 3. Management Plan
This section must include:
3.1: Project team, including an overview of key experts (technical staff) and support staff, and the breakdown of women and men within the team. Indicate what gender considerations have been made in the composition of the project team;
3.2 Deliverables: list all reports, guidance notes, policy briefs, knowledge-sharing events, or other deliverables resulting from this project;
3.3. Knowledge dissemination plan, outlining the potential uses, influence, and change impacts.
Section 4. Capability Reference
This section must include previously done work and establish its relevance to the scope of the RFA. Please mention all previously completed projects of a similar nature, including funding size. Furthermore, please attach:
4.1. One short writing sample or other deliverable from a previous project.
Section 5. Financial Proposal
Clearly outline the proposed project budget in Uganda Shillings, and mention appropriate budget notes. It is preferred to outline activity-wise budget and avoid lump sum costs. Do mention if some local contribution is shared. The cost should be calculated in Uganda Shillings only.