AWDF ANNOUNCED GRANT OPPORTUNITY FOR WORLD AIDS DAY 2016

World AIDS Day 2016

Despite important progress, the HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to impact the lives of women and girls, with African women still disproportionately infected and continuing to carry the work of care and support at community and family level.

HIV prevention remains a concern, as rates of new HIV infections are not declining as hoped. Young African women aged 15-24 account for 25% of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa[1] - a statistic that shows a need to keep our focus on young women’s lives and rights.

For World AIDS Day 2016, AWDF is offering grants to support activities by African women’s organisations focused on young women’s bodily rights, HIV prevention, and intersections with violence against women. We encourage approaches that address the underlying needs to support young women to make positive choices around their bodies and health, and build societies that support their right to live free from violence in the context of HIV and AIDS.

We particularly welcome applications from organisations of women living with HIV, groups of women living with disabilities, and from young women’s groups. AWDF encourages innovation- so do send in your creative ideas!

About the World AIDS Day Grants

Every year on 1 December we commemorate World AIDS Day, as an act of solidarity with people living with HIV and AIDS, and an opportunity to remind duty bearers and society at large to keep the focus and momentum on HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.

AWDF instituted the World AIDS Day (WAD) grants programme to support women’s rights organisations to actively participate in the global campaign and keep African women’s priorities around HIV and AIDS on the African and global agenda. The programme seeks to support women’s organisations to raise their voices and support the leadership of women living with HIV&AIDS

The WAD programme provides a maximum grant of $1000 to women’s organisations. The activities must promote women’s rights and involve women in planning and leadership of activities. 

How to apply

Please follow the application guidelines below. Note that the maximum amount of grant allowed is $1,000.  If you are awarded a grant, you will be expected to send in a report of your activities that contain concrete outcome(s) of the activities implemented.

Applicants must fit AWDF’s general grantee guidelines (women-led, African women’s rights organisations).

---

Please visit the AWDF website and follow the guidelines to apply for the 16 Days of activism against Gender Based Violence grant. 

Also, find below the link to the Call on the website.

http://awdf.org/call-for-proposals-16-days-of-activism-against-gender-based-violence/

Our hands are clean,  we are young people with fresh brain,  our ideas are latest,  we are digital in thinking and reason.  Our attributes must not be useless. Please kindly help/assist us Let effect the change we desire and build a Community/society were our young ones/children will be proud of.

An important point to remember is that community organization is fundamentally a grassroots process. It's not about an outside "expert" telling a community what it should work on. Instead, it's about community members getting excited about something, and using that energy to create change. In short, community organization is all about empowering people to improve their lives, however that might be best done.

Our belief in the equality of all people, for instance, or in the importance of individuals' efforts to improve their communities -- are not topics of specific sections, but make up the foundation of what we do. These beliefs and ideas are at the base of all of our work at the Community Tool Box.

One such idea is that of community organization -- the idea that people can and should come together to talk about what matters to them, and then work together to successfully change their communities. As this idea is a common thread woven throughout our work, we'd like to use this chapter to make it explicit, and try to explore it more fully.

So, then, on the following few screens (and in the next few sections) we'll do just that. In the remainder of this section, we'll give a general overview of community organization -- what it is and how you do it. We'll also give brief explanations of different ways of looking at community organization. Although all of the strategies we will discuss have quite a bit in common, it may be helpful to separate out and compare different approaches in order for us to look more clearly at our work.

Future Community Development Sustainability/Strategy

Communities of the future will be very different from the ones we live in today. These communities will need to be different because, as we move through the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, we face a whole new set of socioeconomic, technological, and global forces that are unlike those that brought us to where we are today. The renaissance fueled by these forces will dwarf any we have experienced until now. It will alter dramatically the way we live in our communities, their form and function, and, most critically, the way we plan and develop them. At stake is the quality of life, not only for ourselves but also for our children and grandchildren. Local governments will need to understand these forces and to move one step ahead, using this knowledge to maximize the planning and development process and to improve the places in which we live.

Only by applying this knowledge can we sustain our communities and derive benefit from an increasingly complex future. The challenges that we as a nation face--economic viability, deteriorating infrastructure, natural disasters, environmental pollution, social disintegration, loss of community, crime and violence, urban blight, and unmanaged growth--can be viewed either as our shared doom or as our common call to action, a universal opportunity to change, improve, and optimize. Sustainable communities are nothing less than the key to optimizing our future.

What are sustainable communities? Why are they important? What benefits do they bring? How can we create them? How have communities successfully applied the principles of sustainable development? This article will address these questions and provide local governments with a framework of knowledge that they can use to sustain their communities through the planning and development of the built environment. Its objectives are, first, to demystify and "practicalize" the concept of sustainability and, second, to explain how local governments can apply the important tools of this process to achieving sustainable communities.


Benefits of Sustainability
Sustainability is good business from the social, economic, and environmental perspectives. When tied to a community's vision, sustainable development can resolve successfully many key issues faced by communities today. Within the context of the built environment, sustainable development is especially effective and in a tangible way.

For example, a park can be a sustainable component of the ecology and a community focal point when it is planned not as a parcel but as a system supportive of and accessible to all kinds of living things. It can be a catch basin for stormwater runoff, a means to mitigate flooding and pollution, a centerpiece for economic development initiatives, a place of serene beauty and contemplation, and a showcase and habitat for local plant and animal species.

Across the country, sustainable development has offered practical solutions to common problems. Seattle based its highly effective recycling and waste reduction program on sustainable themes and now applies the concept in its efforts to curb sprawl, to preserve the landscape of the Cascade foothills, and to enlarge the public's role in the planning process. Boulder, Colorado, created urban growth boundaries and improved transportation options to sustain its quality of life and scenic edge. Austin, Texas, established a Green Builder Program to encourage the use of energy-conserving building practices. Portland, Oregon, launched an initiative for carbon dioxide reduction based on sustainable changes to the built environment. And, Valmeyer, Illinois, used sustainable planning practices to relocate outside the Mississippi floodplain and to mitigate future flood damage.

These communities and others demonstrate the multiple goals of sustainable development. Sustainable development can enhance a sense of place, reduce crime, mitigate natural hazards, conserve energy and resources, preserve culture and heritage, improve traffic circulation, and reduce waste. It can attract more viable economic development as competition among communities for high-quality businesses becomes more intense. Perhaps most important, it can help relate and integrate the many components of a community to achieve a synergistic whole.

Future Community Development Sustainability/Strategy

Communities of the future will be very different from the ones we live in today. These communities will need to be different because, as we move through the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, we face a whole new set of socioeconomic, technological, and global forces that are unlike those that brought us to where we are today. The renaissance fueled by these forces will dwarf any we have experienced until now. It will alter dramatically the way we live in our communities, their form and function, and, most critically, the way we plan and develop them. At stake is the quality of life, not only for ourselves but also for our children and grandchildren. Local governments will need to understand these forces and to move one step ahead, using this knowledge to maximize the planning and development process and to improve the places in which we live.

Only by applying this knowledge can we sustain our communities and derive benefit from an increasingly complex future. The challenges that we as a nation face--economic viability, deteriorating infrastructure, natural disasters, environmental pollution, social disintegration, loss of community, crime and violence, urban blight, and unmanaged growth--can be viewed either as our shared doom or as our common call to action, a universal opportunity to change, improve, and optimize. Sustainable communities are nothing less than the key to optimizing our future.

What are sustainable communities? Why are they important? What benefits do they bring? How can we create them? How have communities successfully applied the principles of sustainable development? This article will address these questions and provide local governments with a framework of knowledge that they can use to sustain their communities through the planning and development of the built environment. Its objectives are, first, to demystify and "practicalize" the concept of sustainability and, second, to explain how local governments can apply the important tools of this process to achieving sustainable communities.


Benefits of Sustainability
Sustainability is good business from the social, economic, and environmental perspectives. When tied to a community's vision, sustainable development can resolve successfully many key issues faced by communities today. Within the context of the built environment, sustainable development is especially effective and in a tangible way.

For example, a park can be a sustainable component of the ecology and a community focal point when it is planned not as a parcel but as a system supportive of and accessible to all kinds of living things. It can be a catch basin for stormwater runoff, a means to mitigate flooding and pollution, a centerpiece for economic development initiatives, a place of serene beauty and contemplation, and a showcase and habitat for local plant and animal species.

Across the country, sustainable development has offered practical solutions to common problems. Seattle based its highly effective recycling and waste reduction program on sustainable themes and now applies the concept in its efforts to curb sprawl, to preserve the landscape of the Cascade foothills, and to enlarge the public's role in the planning process. Boulder, Colorado, created urban growth boundaries and improved transportation options to sustain its quality of life and scenic edge. Austin, Texas, established a Green Builder Program to encourage the use of energy-conserving building practices. Portland, Oregon, launched an initiative for carbon dioxide reduction based on sustainable changes to the built environment. And, Valmeyer, Illinois, used sustainable planning practices to relocate outside the Mississippi floodplain and to mitigate future flood damage.

These communities and others demonstrate the multiple goals of sustainable development. Sustainable development can enhance a sense of place, reduce crime, mitigate natural hazards, conserve energy and resources, preserve culture and heritage, improve traffic circulation, and reduce waste. It can attract more viable economic development as competition among communities for high-quality businesses becomes more intense. Perhaps most important, it can help relate and integrate the many components of a community to achieve a synergistic whole.