The Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP) provides non-governmental and community-based organizations (NGOs/CBOs) in developing countries with grants to enable them to tackle global environmental challenges while addressing local sustainable development needs. SGP is a GEF corporate programme, implemented by UNDP and executed by UNOPS. SGP Lesotho started financing projects in 2008. Since then, it has succeeded in funding and providing technical support for more than 50 grant projects.
In its 6th Operational Phase (OP6) which will be under implementation during 2015 to 2018, SGP has the following objective: ?to support the creation of global environmental benefits and the safeguarding of the global environment through community and local solutions that complement and add value to national and global level action?. To realize this objective, the SGP has come up with key strategic initiatives which are multi-focal in character and that will guide SGP grant-making in OP6. Countries will be able to prioritize and select from among these strategic initiatives based on national priorities and following country level multi-stakeholder consultations:
i. Community landscape/seascape conservation
ii. Climate smart innovative agro-ecology
iii. Low carbon energy access co-benefits
iv. Local to global chemical management coalitions
v. CSO-government policy and planning dialogue platforms
vi. Promoting social inclusion:
- Gender mainstreaming
- Youth involvement
- Indigenous Peoples fellowships
vii. Global reach for citizen practice based knowledge programme
- Digital library of community innovations
- South-South community innovation exchange
A key element of SGP?s implementation in OP6 will be the development of landscape/seascape approaches within countries to better focus grant-making and promote strategic programming and clustering of small grant projects with the aim to achieve greater impact and lead to synergies and opportunities for scaling up. Depending on size and context of countries, as well as available funding for grant-making, countries may select one or more landscapes/seascapes within which community projects will be supported. SGP will focus on supporting and coordinating concrete actions at the grassroots level by providing small-scale finance for local community-led projects within given priority landscapes, to achieve landscape-scale impacts in developing countries. SGP will also review, analyze, and codify results of these on-the-ground actions to distill and disseminate lessons which can be used for replication within the country and in other parts of the world.
Another key element of SGP?s approach in OP6 will be to enhance its role as a Grantmaker+ by strategically planning for the provision of services needed for achievement of greater portfolio impact, this may be done through selective use of capacity development grants as well as non-grant support services, networks and partnerships.
The main objective of the project is to help SGP undertake a preparatory process to develop its strategy for OP6.