EPLO Brown Bag Lunch Events

EPLO Brown Bag Lunch events are 1 – 1.5 hour-long, informal round-table discussions on a wide range of geographic and thematic topics with relevance for the EU and its support for peacebuilding and conflict prevention. Participation is free and (usually) open to all but registration is mandatory.

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Next event

Title	Exploring flexible funding models for locally-led peacebuilding: the case of the ‘Local Action Fund’
Date	Tuesday 21 March
Time	12:30 – 13:30 CET
Platform	Zoom
Short Description	Local peacebuilders around the globe need more, and more flexible, support, particularly when it comes to funding. This widely shared assessment is not new and was once again emphasized at the 2022 United Nations High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on Financing for Peacebuilding. Various obstacles come in the way of doing things differently: old habits, time pressure, donor’s internal constraints, risk aversion, and at times a lack of imagination. Since 2019, Peace Direct and local partners in eight different countries have been testing a flexible funding model called the “Local Action Fund” (LAF) – a mechanism which can provide flexible and responsive small grants (below 15.000 EUR), coupled with mentoring, training, advocacy and other forms of accompaniment and peer learning. The LAF mechanism aims explicitly at supporting formal and informal peacebuilding initiatives operating at grassroot or sub-regional level, i.e. below the field of vision of most international donors. Since 2019, it has provided more than 1.4 million EUR through 500 small grants to local groups in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sudan. In this virtual Brown Bag Lunch discussion, Harriet Knox-Brown, Head of Programmes and Research, and deputy CEO at Peace Direct, and Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi, founder and CEO of HIVE, will present how the LAF operates and some of the main lessons learned from its implementation so far. They will also share reflections on the changes needed from the international community, including European INGOs and donors such as the European Union, to better support locally-led peacebuilding initiatives.
Registration	Please note that registration is mandatory. If you would like to participate, please register on this page.