The Swiss Government project ‘For an Active Civil Society Together – ACT’ has launched a Call for Proposals for Community Boost Grants.

Community Boost Grants are available to civil society organisations (CSOs) and informal citizen groups whose initiatives and actions are aimed at solving a problem of public interest in their local communities with the active participation and support of citizens.

A local community may be a street, a block of flats, a cluster of residential units, a local community council, or a municipality, as the largest of them all. A project proposal may only address a smaller issue in a local community (e.g. building a children’s playground, eliminating smaller illegal dumps, advocating the adoption of a specific decision at the local council level, repurposing and/or refurbishing a communal space, providing legal aid to help exercise guaranteed rights in the community, creating access ramps for people with special disabilities, etc.) and must include mobilisation and participation of as many citizens as possible.

Awarded CSOs and informal groups will not only become the beneficiaries of the financial support to carry out activities in their local communities but also of a specially designed and tailored programme that will help them build capacity and upgrade the know-how to be able to actively encourage citizen participation and articulate citizens’ interests in the community.

Under this call for proposals, the ACT project plans to support up to 5 organisations. The maximum grant amount per project proposal is RSD 350,000.00.