Grant Announcement: Community led monitoring and advocacy on Roma health

Open Society Foundations
Public Health Program (AMHI) Grant Announcement.
Community led monitoring and advocacy on Roma health, Request for Letters of Intent (LOIs), July 2014.

The Open Society Foundations’ Public Health Program (PHP) is committed to advancing health and human rights. The Accountability and Monitoring in Health Initiative (AMHI) of the Public Health Program contributes to this mission by supporting civil society groups to effectively and strategically use community monitoring and applied budget work to push for greater accountability and transparency in the financing and delivery of health care at the local, national, regional and global levels. Roma Health Project (RHP) adheres to PHP vision, mission and goals with a focus on advancing the health and health-related rights of Roma persons, who as a rule experience discrimination and human rights violations and have unequal and inequitable access to health and health care as a result of their ethnicity and consequent social exclusion.

AMHI and RHP seek to strengthen meaningful and sustained engagement by affected communities, including Roma communities in the development, implementation, and monitoring of health budgets, policies, programs and practices; to promote government accountability to citizens; and to foster an informed and open dialogue about the governance of public health systems, provision of health services, and advancement of health and rights. This includes supporting the development and strengthening of the capacity of advocacy groups to promote health policies and practices grounded in human rights, using evidence collected through community monitoring and other approaches.

To these ends, AMHI and RHP provide grants to strengthen the capacity of organizations to incorporate community monitoring in their efforts to promote accountability in health, including for marginalized populations.

AMHI’s work on accountability in health for marginalized populations has included work to address Roma health in Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania. A key outcome for this work is the increased participation of Roma in community monitoring for improved accountability in health policies and services.

The current context in Romania of healthcare reform (including decentralization), the implementation of the National Roma Integration Strategy and the next programming period of EU Structural Funds provides an important context for addressing Roma health. In particular, ongoing healthcare reforms in Romania risk further reducing access to health and social services for socially marginalized and excluded communities such as Roma. AMHI and RHP seek to support organizations to strengthen the expertise of Roma NGOs in assessing the impact of health policies on Roma communities and monitoring health-related public budgets in order to promote better health services for Roma in Romania.

To this end, AMHI and RHP are pleased to announce a new grant initiative to support civil society monitoring and advocacy on Roma health in Romania. These grants are aimed at organizations who seek to carry out advocacy on Roma health, including through the use of community monitoring to assess Roma access to health services and to engage with local, regional and national policy and decision-making to improve access. This may involve Capacity Building for organizations to increase their ability to carry out community monitoring and to increase the capacity of Roma communities to carry out monitoring and engage in advocacy.

·  Application Procedure

Organizations that wish to apply for funding must first submit a Letter of Intent (LOI).

LOIs should be 2-3 pages in length and should include:

•    Name and location of the organization.
•    Name and contact information, including e-mail address, of the person submitting the LOI.
•    A brief description of the organization including mission statement.
•    A brief outline of current Roma health activities, including any advocacy or any monitoring components. What are your advocacy objectives, and how will monitoring advance those objectives?

5.    Briefly describe your ideas/plans for future Roma health advocacy and how monitoring would enable you to achieve your objectives. 

Letters of intent are invited for proposals up to USD $45,000 each for a period of one year.

LOIs should be submitted to Rosalind McKenna at rosalind.mckenna@opensocietyfoundations.org  and Maja Saitovic at maja.saitovic@opensocietyfoundations.org by 8 August 2014.

Only successful applicants will be contacted and invited to submit full proposals.