The European Commission (EC) has announced a call for proposals to contribute to inclusive and sustainable growth in the Lao PDR, through Civil Society’s action.

Objectives of the Programme and Priority Issues

• The specific objectives of this call for proposals according the below lots are:
• Lot 1: Community-Based Forestry and biodiversity protection
• To strengthen the engagement of civil society organisations in protecting biodiversity and ecosystems in Lao PDR, including through promoting sustainable forest-based value chains.
• Lot 2: Early Childhood Education (ECE)
• To strengthen the engagement of Civil Society Organisations in improving access and quality of Early Childhood Education (ECE) in rural areas and for vulnerable groups in Lao PDR.
• The priorities of this call for proposals are:
• The action shall pursue one of the above lots and contribute to capacity building in promoting local CSOs, Youth and Women Groups in policy dialogue, advocacy, awareness raising, in line with the global objective of the call for proposals.
• The action should prioritise areas/organisations/groups where the capacity is weak and/or newly small groups/organisations and avoid duplication with other activities supported by the EU and/or other development partners.
• Particular attention should be paid to the most vulnerable segments of the populations i.e. women, youth, migrant workers/returnees, informal workers, persons with disabilities, urban poor, low-income/income less households, farmers, unemployed youth/work force, children from poor communities, ethnic, and elderly persons.
• All actions must respect the principles of human rights and integrate one or more of the cross-cutting issues, such as climate change, environment protection, gender equality and women economic empowerment, the protection and promotion of women and children’s rights, indigenous rights, rights of persons with disabilities.

Funding Information

• The overall indicative amount made available under this call for proposals is EUR 3,200,000.00 The contracting authority reserves the right not to award all available funds.
• Indicative allocation of funds by lot distribution:
• Lot 1: Community Based Forestry and biodiversity protection
• Total available budget: 1,600,000.00 EUR
• Lot 2: Early Childhood Education
• Total available budge: 1,600,000.00 EUR
• Size of grants
• Any grant requested under this call for proposals must fall between the following minimum and maximum amounts:
• minimum amount: EUR 1,500,000.00
• maximum amount: EUR 1,600,000.00

Duration

• The initial planned duration of an action may not be lower than 36 months nor exceed 48 months.

Types of Activity

• Type of activities which may be financed under this call includes (non-exhaustive) the following:
  • For both lots, actions should:
• Facilitate Lao CSOs, Youth and Women Groups to improve know-how transferring, peer to peer exchanging, structure dialogue spaces, interaction between them and/or Local Authorities (LAs) and creation of multi-stakeholders platforms;
• Support participation of Lao CSOs, Youth and Women Groups in policy processes and implementation at local and central levels;
• Support Lao CSOs, Youth and Women Groups to produce more and better evidence-based research, studies for policy dialogue and advocacy purposes of the relevant areas.
• • Lot 1: Community-Based Forestry and biodiversity protection
• Actions should support reconciling competing social, economic and environmental objectives i.e biodiversity/preservation through the sustainable use of natural resources. This include:
• Actions focusing the support of awareness raising and communities education in relation to ecosystems, and natural resources managements;
• Actions focusing the support of dialogue and consultation for on the use and protection of forest resources in accordance with the laws;
• Actions focusing on strengthening the capacity of the villages to enable them to take the lead in implementing the Village Forest Management Plan, controlling or preventing forest fire, prevent encroachment, restore the forest areas.
  • Lot 2: Early Childhood Education (ECE)
• Actions focusing the enhancement of ECE access through technical capacities of national CSOs in participating and promoting ECE participation through expansion of any cost-effective ECE models (appropriate teaching-learning approach) e.g. pre-primary education, Community Based School Readiness, Community Child Development Groups (CCDGs), Multi-Age Teaching (MAT), mobile ECE, a one-year pre-primary classes, and pre-primary classes during a school break as well as improving environment inside and outside the classrooms including good nutrition, playground, toilets and hand washing station.
• Actions focusing the enhancement of ECE quality through parents and community participation and more capacity building to boost teachers’ competency to have sufficient content knowledge and pedagogical skills to teach and assess inclusive, effective foundational literacy and numeracy lessons as well as promoting and ensuring proper nutrition for pre-primary education children.
• Actions promoting and improving ECE teaching and learning materials (TLMs) including distributing them to pre-schools in remote areas.

Location

• Actions must take place in Lao PDR

Eligibility Criteria

• Lead applicant
  • In order to be eligible for a grant, the lead applicant must:
    • be a legal person and
    • be non-profit-making and
    • be civil society organisation
    • be established in a Member State of the European Union or in a Member State of the European Economic Area (EEA), pre-accession countries and several other listed in OECD member states
    • or in Lao PDR officially registered in accordance with the legislation in force in the country concerned.
    • and
    • be directly responsible for the preparation and management of the action with the co-applicant(s) and affiliated entity(ies), not acting as an intermediary.
• Co-applicant(s)
  • The lead applicant must act with co-applicant(s) as specified hereafter:
  • Number of co-applicants should not be more than three and at least one of beneficiaries (lead applicant or co-applicant) must be a Lao CSO, legally established in Lao PDR.
  • Co-applicants participate in designing and implementing the action, and the costs they incur are eligible in the same way as those incurred by the lead applicant.
  • Co-applicants must satisfy the eligibility criteria as applicable to the lead applicant himself.
  • In addition to the categories referred to in Section 2.1.1, the following are however also eligible as co-applicant:
• Local Authorities (LAs) or Association of Local Authorities (ALAs) :
• legally registered in in the Lao PDR
• constituted in accordance with the legislation in force in the country concerned.
• Co-applicants must sign the mandate form
• Affiliated entities
• The lead applicant and its co-applicant(s) may act with affiliated entity(ies).
• Only the following entities may be considered as affiliated entities to the lead applicant and/or to co-applicant(s):
• Only entities having a structural link with the applicants (i.e. the lead applicant or a co-applicant), in particular a legal or capital link.
• This structural link encompasses mainly two notions:
• Control on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings:
• Entities affiliated to an applicant may hence be:
• Entities directly or indirectly controlled by the applicant (daughter companies or first-tier subsidiaries). They may also be entities controlled by an entity controlled by the applicant (granddaughter companies or second-tier subsidiaries) and the same applies to further tiers of control;
• Entities directly or indirectly controlling the applicant (parent companies). Likewise, they may be entities controlling an entity controlling the applicant;
• Entities under the same direct or indirect control as the applicant (sister companies).
• Membership, i.e. the applicant is legally defined as a e.g. network, federation, association in which the proposed affiliated entities also participate or the applicant participates in the same entity (e.g. network, federation, association,) as the proposed affiliated entities.

For more information, visit EC.