UPDATE 1: Please see updated application form in the revised application guidelines – any organization may apply regardless of the share of funding amount requested as a % of the organizations’ average total Budget.
A second Q&A webinar will be held on Friday, July 16 at 4pm WAT on Webex via this link.
UPDATE 2: The new deadline for submitting grant applications is July 30, 2021 (23:59 GMT)
The Support to Women and Girls in Nigeria Multi-Donor Trust Fund (SWAG MDTF) is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals for two grantees to support women’s social and economic empowerment through the World Bank-supported Nigeria For Women Project (NFWP). More information about NFWP and the SWAG MDTF is available below.
Call for proposals instructions
The World Bank is seeking two separate grantees to implement two sets of activities to support the NFWP:
- Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Organization – The grantee for this activity will support and NFWP in the development of a comprehensive M&E framework, Iterative Beneficiary Monitoring (IBM) system, and Responsive Feedback Mechanism (RFM). The grantee will be expected to provide capacity building support to the Federal Project Coordinating Unit (FPCU) and all 5 State Project Coordinating Units (SPCUs). For full details please see Annex 1 Terms of Reference in the Application Guidelines here.
- Umbrella Organization – The grantee for this activity will provide technical assistance to build NFWP staff capacity in key areas and will engage and supervise partners to (i) implement health and Gender Based Violence training and communications for select WAGs; (ii) coordinate a livelihoods pilot for select women beneficiaries of the NFWP; and (iii) implement social norms marketing at the community level in select LGAs. For full details please see Annex 2 Terms of Reference in the Application Guidelines here.
Eligibility: This call for proposals is open to public and private organizations, including international development companies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and civil society organizations (CSOs). Eligibility criteria, application guidelines and forms can be downloaded here. We suggest that you read through this entire document BEFORE beginning your proposal.
All applications, without exception, must be submitted by email to NFWPCall@worldbank.org
The deadline for submitting grant applications is July 30, 2021 (23:59 GMT)
A webinar will be held on July 16, 2021 at 16:00 WAT to answer any questions about the Call for Proposals and the two Terms of Reference. Please see Webex link for the webinar here.
About NFWP
In response to a request from the Government of Nigeria, the World Bank supported the design of the NFWP with the objective to support women’s improved livelihood opportunities in targeted communities of Nigeria.
NFWP proposes to demonstrate the impact of a multi-dimensional, medium to long-term approach to overcome the main institutional and market failures limiting women’s economic outcomes in Nigeria. While the NFWP is a Federal Program, it is being implemented in five States (Abia, Kebbi, Niger, Ogun and Taraba) and three LGAs per State, based on agreed criteria. (A sixth State was included in the design and may be added in future.) The project is being implemented through the following components:
Component 1: Building Social Capital
This component aims to build social capital by galvanizing women to become members of Women Affinity Groups (WAGs) and strengthening both new and existing WAGs to serve as institutional platforms for women in Nigeria. The project aims to create an enabling environment to ensure the buy-in of key stakeholders and adequate support at the household level to facilitate investments focused on women. Activities under Component 1 will be implemented under two sub-components: (i) Influencing Social Norms and (ii) Support to WAGs.
Component 2: Livelihoods Program
This component aims to support economically active women in WAGs through provision of livelihoods grants and holistic, as well as targeted, skills trainings in savings and loans, financial education, gender and life skills, and business skills. Business plans prepared through this process of capacity building will support the implementation of livelihood grants to meet both capital and operational costs while clearly highlighting the use of funds and their contribution to livelihood enhancement. This component has two sub-components: (i) support to individual livelihoods and (ii) support to livelihood collectives.
Component 3: Innovations and Partnerships
This component supports innovations in social and economic spheres to further women’s livelihood outcomes. The identification of these innovations will be through a development marketplace approach which will invite proposals from individuals, CSOs, and private sector to propose interventions that would address particular binding constraints women face in their socio-economic empowerment and in particular access to livelihoods, which can then be scaled up. While this component, as well as the overall project, are focused on addressing demand-side barriers to economic empowerment, this component will support innovative approaches aimed at addressing supply side barriers, including those for access to financial services as well as to improve effective project implementation.
Component 4: Project Management, Monitoring and Evaluation and Learning
The aim of this component is to support the advancement of policy dialogue; strengthen technical and implementation capacity; and foster better coordination among implementing partners at the Federal, State, and LGA levels through deployment of highly qualified technical professionals. This component supports technology-based solutions for project management and project-related service delivery and monitoring. Support is being provided for designing the Project Management Information System (PMIS), evaluation of outcome and impacts, participatory M&E and internal learning, and environmental and social safeguards monitoring.
Target Beneficiaries
The Project targets women who are economically active as well as poor, vulnerable and marginalized women for mobilization and participation in WAGs. The Project works with existing groups and other women above 18 years of age in the participating communities to support their mobilization into WAGs. The Project will target 54,000 individual beneficiary women per state, benefitting a total of 324,000 women as part of about 21,600 WAGs across the various States by May 2023. All WAG members will be eligible to benefit from livelihoods grants. Livelihoods support will target women who are currently economically active including women engaged in informal, unipersonal, small-scale businesses and small-scale farming as they are underserved by current programming and have better readiness for upward socio-economic mobility.
About the Trust Fund to Support FOR Women's Social and Economic Empowerment through the NFWP
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is partnering with the World Bank to support the implementation of the NFWP, particularly to establish a solid model of WAGs that can be used for effective service delivery in Nigeria. This partnership is being materialized through activities planned under the Trust Fund “Support for Women's Social and Economic Empowerment through the NFWP”.
The development objective of the TF is to “support women’s social and economic empowerment in selected states and LGAs of Nigeria” through leveraging three distinct but interrelated and interdependent investments under the World Bank-funded NFWP:
- Designing, strengthening and institutionalizing the WAG model in Nigeria: Activities under this area aim to both establish a solid and functional core model for WAGs in Nigeria as well as provide the necessary support to the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs to sustain this program.
- Testing and Evaluating the WAG model as part of the NFWP approach in Nigeria: Following phases and scale up of the NFWP and the WAG model depend on the availability of solid evidence that can prove the impacts of the WAG model on women socio-economic outcomes. Activities under this area will generate this evidence through rigorous impact evaluations on the overall WAG model and its impacts on women’s livelihoods and economic empowerment and in turn on gender equality.
- Layering the WAG model for Development Outcomes: Activities under this grant aim to strengthen WAGs as platforms for service delivery that result in better human development outcomes and platforms for improved livelihoods in Nigeria.