8165: Civil Society Support Programme Phase II

The overall objective of this 3 year programme is to increase trust between government and civil society to deliver enhanced state accountability and responsiveness, resulting in better quality public services. To deliver this a contracted service provider will: allocate grants to meet the needs of hard to reach people, provide technical support to build civil society organisational capacity and facilitate collaborative relationships with Government. The supplier will be expected to support civil society organisations all over Ethiopia. It will berequired to establish at least 4 regional offices outside Addis Ababa. The beneficiaries of this programme willbe communities in Ethiopia, especially the poorest and hardest to reach. The supplier will be directly responsible for the delivery of two main programme components of CSSP II: Part I. Competitive grant windows for CSOs with an aspect of strategic direction: Building on the work of CSSP I, the supplier for CSSP II will deliver rigorous and efficient fund management, assessing grant applications from civil society organisations, and administering the funds to successful applicants. Grant for CSOs will have more aspect of strategic direction but will retain flexible windows to respond to opportunities. Fewer grants, with longer duration, will be distributed than in the first phase (more than700) and will focus on CSOs which have a track record of success. The programme will provide Strategic grants: The Programme will start quickly to provide grants to address the needs of hard to reach people themed around the 6 strategic issues identified under CSSP 1, which are; • increasing voice and access to services of disadvantaged people in rural and remote areas; • increasing access to education for girls in rural communities by increasing protection from violence; • increasing voice and access to livelihood services for pastoral women; • reintegration of women prisoners and their children into society; • increasing awareness about people (users and families) affected by chat abuse and the services available to support them; • Increasing the voice of adults and children affected by special learning needs and mental ill-health and improving the services available to them. The supplier, in consultation with civil society, government and donors, will test the validity of the above themes and look at new themes which may have emerged. Flexible grants: will use principles of flexibility and adaptation in order to respond to opportunities (e.g. anew policy proposal by government) or constraints (e.g. new funding directives) which arise. It will be anopportunistic fund which will; • Support to build and strengthen coalitions for constructive collaboration with government to address the needsof the most marginalised people. 3 / 5 • Enable CSOs to respond in a more sophisticated way to the needs of excluded people. • Enable CSOs to responds innovatively to the particular needs of Ethiopian Societies and Charities. • Support activities to promote the gender issues across the portfolio and in the sector – for example funding for internships for graduate women within the CSO sector itself. • It will support analysis by CSOs (e.g. legal analysis, social exclusion analysis, and political economy analysis)to enable them to better understand socio-cultural and institutional reasons for exclusion. Part II. Capacity building: The supplier will be expected to support civil society organisations to: Strengthen skills and confidence for collaboration with government: This support will focus at the regional and sub-regional levels, but over time aim to link to the national level. Skills will include: relationship building; networking; policy analysis and influencing. Build organisational capacity: project cycle management, leadership, financial management and internal governance will be priorities. A coordination plan should be agreed with other capacity building programmes in Ethiopia to ensure best value for money. The focus will not limited to CSSP grantees, and Ethiopian Charitiesand Societies should be prioritised. Build self-financing capabilities: a donor exit strategy is critical to any development intervention, but the legal context for supporting CSOs in Ethiopia means that it is more imperative. Technical support on revenue generation will support CSOs explore corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship and other options. CSO collective action facility: will support CSOs and CSO coalitions to identify and respond to issues that would benefit from collective action. The facility will be scaled up over time and will also be supported through grants