The More than Brides Alliance looks forward to receiving applications for the Community Skyrocket project, hosted by Simavi. Eligible organizations are national partners of one of the Dutch Funded Child Marriage Alliances (More Than Brides; Her Choice and Yes, I Do) as well as lead organisations of Girls Not Brides national partnership or coalition arrangement. The following nine countries are involved in the project:  Mali, Niger, Malawi, Uganda, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Nepal. Anyone can be a member of a learning exchange.

We are looking for one organization in each country to design and implement a participatory learning exchange initiative (July to September 2020) on the theme of addressing adolescent sexuality of girls in ending child marriage.

Learning exchanges will offer an inspiring space for community members (including adolescent girls) and members of organizations implementing child marriage programs to share, listen, reflect, and co-create knowledge on this topic. Each country initiative will result in a concise knowledge product that explores and practically details the implications of community knowledge, insight into norm change, and effective ways of working at the local level, for improvements in the design, implementation and advocacy of child marriage programs.

There is a lot to be curious about:

• What do communities do to organically shift harmful social norms that inform child marriage? How is formal and informal power leveraged and by whom?
• What indicators do communities use to mark or measure shifts – for example in norms change related to adolescent sexuality? How can scale be achieved?
• What do communities know about managing “backlash,” or widespread negative reactions?
• What can adolescent girls tell us about the role and influence of positive deviance and role models to bring about change in what is considered appropriate behaviour regarding sexuality? Can we get more understanding into instances, where uncommon behaviour or strategy of parents, girls, or even a community around a girl’s sexuality and her right to govern it, “fly in the face of” what is widely believed, considered advantageous and expected?

MMWWK will award one grant per country for a total of nine grants. The ceiling for each grant is €6,000. The nine-country grant holders will convene virtually at the outset of the initiative to agree on common core issues to explore in all countries and again at the end of the grant period to synthesize key results and recommendations from an international and comparative lens.

Learn more about the Learning Spark Fund and stay tuned for upcoming funding opportunities

Are you interested in applying for a grant?

Meet with others at the Learning Spark Fund virtual open space to jointly develop ideas and proposals. To participate in this application process visit the platform to read the terms of reference, access the concept note template and instructions for the video applications. Deadlines will be also posted here as well as the dates for orientation sessions.

Simavi will be receiving a short video and concept notes from eligible applicants on the same platform.

To join the virtual open space, you need to register on our Slack page by following these five steps:

1. Click here to register
2. Enter your email
3. Verify your email through the link in the email you will receive
4. Fill in your nameand create a password
5. Create a profile so that people know who you are

Once you have created the profile and joined the Learning Spark Fund virtual open space, you can choose to access it through the web or download the app for your desktop or mobile device.