The 2025 Carol Bellamy Leadership Award: Call for Applications

Date: 17.01.2025

What is the Carol Bellamy Leadership Award?
The Carol Bellamy Leadership Award was first launched by GCERF in 2022, dedicated to women working at the intersection of women’s empowerment and P/CVE. The CBLA provides funding to its awardees, and supports diverse projects at the intersection of women’s empowerment and P/CVE. In particular, the CBLA supports localized solutions to complex needs as regards to women’s empowerment and P/CVE, and as identified by awardees themselves.

In its 2024-25 edition, 22 awards of 2,000 USD each will be disbursed to organizations or individuals working at the nexus of women’s empowerment and P/CVE in each GCERF partner country (more details below).

Who is eligible to receive a 2025 CBLA? ​

Any individual or organization working on or interested in working at the nexus of women’s empowerment and P/CVE is eligible to apply. In the interests of fairness however, current GCERF partners are not eligible for this award.

One CBLA award will be available in each GCERF partner country where there is an active grant.

Awardees will be pooled and selected from a short-list of applicants in their respective country. ​

What does making an application to the CBLA award entail? Clarification on Carl Bellamy Award Application

• Interested individuals or organizations should email cover page, a (maximum) 2-page plan or (maximum) 5-minute video to grants@kcdf.org detailing how they would plan to use the 2,000 USD as a CBLA awardee.​
• Applicants must specify what pillar(s) their projects will touch upon: ​
• PILLAR 1 Support the development of a small women led local and grassroots organization however the organization deems to be essential. i.e. By operations, training, office payments, technology purchases, et al.​
• PILLAR 2 Develop the leadership skills of and/or enable the promotion to leadership positions of women. ​
• PILLAR 3 Identify and support women from communities vulnerable to VE to establish and/or run their existing initiatives. ​
• The application should also answer the following questions (even if briefly): ​
• What is your history or background, or, that of your organization? ​
• If successful, how will you use the 2024-2025 CBLA? ​
• How will the CBLA allow you to contribute to women’s empowerment? What pillar does it touch on and how?​
• How will the CBLA allow you to prevent violent extremism? ​
• Are you officially registered as a civil society organization? If yes, you must also submit your official registration file to us if this is the case. ​

How are the 2025 CBLA awardees selected?

• Using a predetermined selection framework, the applications will be reviewed by GCERF Torchbearers/CDF. ​
• GCERF 's torchbearer/CDF will provide due diligence on the selected partner.
• In each country, the Torchbearer/CDF will select and award the 2024-2025 CBLA in their country.

Additional Details

Please note that awardees will be asked to provide a short summary of how they are implementing their award halfway through the award and at the end of their award process.

The CBLA awardees 2025 will be selected in the first quarter of 2025.

Please note that only women-led organisations or women (as individuals) are eligible to apply. Previous awardees are not eligible.

Deadline for Applications

All interested individual/organizations should contact us via email at grants@kcdf.org to obtain detailed application form. For any other inquiries related to the contents of this Call for applications please contact Grants via email (grants@kcdf.org) no later than January 23, 2025. CDF will respond to any questions received by January 24, 2025. The individual/organizations is expected to submit the full proposal via email (grants@kcdf.org ) no later than January 31, 2025. The email subject should be marked as per the call: Carol Bellamy Award Application 001/2025_______(name of applicant).