Deadline: Ongoing Opportunity

The Heritage Management Organisation (HERITΛGE) and the Mellon Foundation are launching a new call for concept notes for small grants (US$ 5,000 to US$ 50,000) for organisations, groups and individuals working on heritage across the African continent.

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The grants are part of the Heritage Management Project - Africa (HerMaP-Africa), which is funded by the programme Humanities in Place of the Mellon Foundation. They will finance projects that focus on protecting and/or promoting local heritage for development socio-economic on the continent.

Criteria

There are three main criteria for these small grants:

• Sustainability The focus should be on projects that will have a lasting impact, going far beyond the duration of the project.
  • Potential examples:
    • Protecting heritage sites from desertification by creating green belts, especially where these green areas can increase the biodiversity, bringing benefits to agriculture and encourage tourism.
    • Preserving/stabilising/restoring and adaptively reusing a historic building as a community archive and space events
    • Research on the landscape of public heritage
    • Installing solar panels on property that will generate income or reduce expenditure, even after calculating service and maintenance costs.
    • Construction of tourist infrastructures, using environmentally friendly solutions and a good business plan behind their construction, including a proposal of community use.
    • Direct interventions that strengthen social institutions, such as traditional mediation methods, help communities to discuss and overcome problems.
• Capacity building and network building - They encourage projects that will strengthen local skills and build closer links with peer organisations in the Heritage Management Organisation network.
  • Potential examples:
    • On-the-job training in preventive conservation measures, such as cleaning or fencing off premises.
    • Exchange of experiences and expertise with other local NGOs in Africa, for example on shared issues such as desertification or site erosion.
    • Cooperative training in museum exhibition design during the creation of an interpretation centre.
• Concrete and community impact - They encourage projects with solid, measurable returns in terms of heritage protection and benefits for the local population. Each project must provide clear indicators of the planned impact.
  • These indicators will depend on the type of work carried out, but may include:
    • increased visitation to a heritage site or programme
    • financial benefits for the local community in terms of an increase in the number of jobs or local businesses created.
    • amount of money earned from tourism; money saved by installing solar panels; the size of the area protected from desertification.

For more information, visit Heritage Management Organisation (HERITΛGE).