St Stephen's Green Trust

Grassroots Peace-building in Northern Ireland

pilot grants programme may 2017:
supporting inter-community practice and activism

This grant programme is now closed for 2017 and 2018

St Stephen’s Green Trust (SSGT) has supported organisations working on issues of social justice in Ireland, North and South, over the past 25yrs. It believes that the strengthening of collaborative and supportive relationships within and between communities is essential for peace-building. As part of its commitment to peace-building in Northern Ireland, it wishes to implement a 2-year pilot grant programme supporting work that will have the following outcomes:

• People working collaboratively on an inclusive and inter-community basis to address common issues and
• Identifying barriers to inclusive work, and relationship-building, within and between communities and learning how these can be overcome.

In this pilot phase we are looking for applications that focus on:-

• Supporting work that helps build confidence, relationships and effective activism amongst women and women’s groups; and/or young people and youth groups; and/or people involved in place-based activism.
• Groups that can demonstrate openness to working in an inclusive manner, within and between their communities, based on their activities and experience to date.
• How work undertaken by a cluster of groups working with women, young people and place-based might be further developed with grant support.

SSGT aims to be flexible in the type of inter-community work which might be supported but groups will need to clearly state why they believe their proposed programme of work will result in the outcomes sought by the grant programme.

The overall grants available will be a maximum of £26,000 paid over a two year period (with Year 2 payments being subject to a report on Year 1 outcomes). Applications for smaller grant amounts are also welcome. We will prioritise work which cannot be funded from other sources.

As part of the programme, grantees will be required to participate in a learning network of the funded groups in order to share learning and reflection, both with each other and with the St. Stephen’s Green Trust. This will involve two half-day meetings a year.