In April 2020, WUSC was awarded an $8.5 million grant by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) to deliver the Innovation in Non-traditional Vocational Education and Skills Training (INVEST) project for women in Ghana. The INVEST project is a 5-year collaborative initiative (2020-2025) that will build sustainable pathways to enhanced economic empowerment, well-being and inclusive growth for 5,000 urban poor young women in Accra, Kumasi, and Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana.

ABANTU for Development is a gender and women’s rights organisation that exists to strengthen the capacities of women to participate in decision making spaces at all levels, to influence policies from a gender perspective and to address inequalities and injustices in social relations. INVEST has partnered with ABANTU for Development as the lead organization for the delivery of the gender aspects of the project. ABANTU will lead in capacity building, advisory and coordination, monitoring and supervision to recipient organizations of the Advocacy Innovation Challenge Grant (AICG) on all three locations of the INVEST project namely, Accra in Greater Accra, Kumasi in Ashanti and Sekondi-Takoradi in Western Regions.

Purpose

ABANTU for Development in partnership with WUSC, wishes to announce the second annual call for Concept papers for the ‘Advocacy Innovation Challenge Grant’. The Advocacy Innovation Challenge grant is an annual grant designed to incentivize advocacy campaigns to change public perceptions and challenge social norms that constrain women’s access to employment opportunities in non-traditional trades. The grant will strengthen the capacity of partner organizations to develop, test and scale innovative gender-responsive and inclusive advocacy initiatives to address negative social and gender norms that hinder and limit women’s  equitable access to active participation in non-traditional trades in three regional locations; Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi.

The initiatives will target young women, women-led organisations, influencers, local authorities, Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions and trainers, media and government agencies.  These initiatives are expected to contribute to advancing the project outcomes on improved public and industry attitudes and perceptions towards women's economic participation in non-traditional trades. There are other complementary outputs and partners. As such,  guidance will be provided to successful organizations in designing their campaigns to avoid duplication and reinforce the realisation of concrete outcomes.

Thematic Areas of the Grant

The grant is open to gender responsive, inclusive and innovative campaigns around the key thematic areas indicated below:

Unpaid Care Work

• Campaigns to challenge attitudes that underpin women's unequal responsibility for care work in the household and communities
• Advocacy and campaigns around promoting work life balance for working women in the formal and informal sectors (through gender sensitive and inclusive facilities and policies)

Anticipated Results for the Innovation Grant

The goal of the Challenge Innovation Grant is to advance the INVEST project objectives on changing negative public perceptions and attitudes towards women participation in non-traditional trades, through community mobilization and outreach campaigns targeting young women, women-led organisations, key influencers and change agents. The objectives are as follows:

1. To influence negative public perceptions and attitudes on women’s participation in non-traditional sectors.
2. To strengthen the capacity of women and youth-led organizations to engage the public and advocate for increased participation and inclusion of young women, particularly urban poor young women who face multiple levels of marginalization, in high-growth and non-traditional sectors (inclusion).
3. To strengthen the capacity of recipient organizations to scale up their advocacy and public engagement initiatives on gender responsive or transformative inclusive, and innovative women’s empowerment approaches.
4. To mobilize a diverse and inclusive community of advocates for women’s empowerment in the non-traditional trades sectors through advocacy and public engagement initiatives.
5. To complement the project’s gender-responsive and inclusive media and communication efforts with outreach that targets family, community leaders and industry stakeholders with messages that promote and support young women’s empowerment in non-traditional occupations/trades.
6. Promote equitable, accessible and an enabling environment for women’s economic empowerment in training institutions, workplaces and communities.