GFF X Civic Pillar 2: Advancing Local Innovations Through Gevorenance and Networks

About ALIGN

Civil society and youth-led organizations are essential partners in improving health and nutrition outcomes for women, children, and adolescents. Yet too often, barriers to participation limit their influence.

The World Bank Group’s GFF × CIVIC Platform —a joint initiative of the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF) and CIVIC: The Civil Society and Social Innovation Alliance—works to help close that gap.

Through its second pillar, the initiative is supporting a consortium led by Action Against Hunger, in partnership with The Youth Café and the Emergency Nutrition Network, working together as ALIGN – Advancing Local Innovations for Adolescent Health & Nutrition through Governance and Networks – to support civil society and youth-led organizations in adapting, expanding, and integrating proven community-driven adolescent health and nutrition innovations into national systems. The program combines competitive grants, tailored capacity strengthening, meaningful adolescent engagement, peer learning, evidence generation, partnership building, and policy influence.

ALIGN is a two-year initiative running from August 2026 to July 2028 across 12 African countries.

Funding Opportunity

• ALIGN will award a total of USD 2,568,000 across 12 eligible African countries. One consortium in each country will be awarded up to USD 214,000.
• Eligible applicants are legally registered local nonprofit civil society organizations (CSOs) and youth-led organizations (YLOs) operating in one of the 12 eligible countries.
• ALIGN anticipates selecting one CSO–YLO consortium per country; partnerships should clearly define the lead organization, partner roles, governance, accountability, and grant-management arrangements.
• Selected consortia will receive an 18-month grant together with tailored technical assistance, mentoring, peer learning, and capacity-strengthening support.

ALIGN’s Goal

Adolescents experience improved access, equity, and outcomes in health and nutrition services through integrating and expanding proven civil society innovations in national systems.

Where ALIGN Works

ALIGN operates in Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

How ALIGN works

• Identifies and supports promising evidence-based civil society and youth-led innovations.
• Strengthens organizational, technical, financial, monitoring, evidence, and policy-engagement capacity.
• Connects innovators with peers, governments, technical experts, and development partners.
• Generates evidence on performance, implementation, impact, and cost-effectiveness.
• Supports policy dialogue, financing, adoption, integration, and pathways to scale.

Adolescent and youth engagement: Adolescents and young people are engaged as co-creators throughout design, implementation, monitoring, learning, governance, feedback, and accountability.

Call for Expression of Interest

This document provides information on the ALIGN initiative, eligibility criteria, application requirements, and submission instructions for interested organizations. Please download the call here.

Submit Your Application

Expressions of Interest must be submitted by 5:00 PM EDT on October 21, 2026. For more information, please review the Call for Proposals and download the Expression of Interest template here.

If you have technical difficulties uploading the file or submitting the form, please email your submissions to alignacf@actionagainsthunger.org.