Sub-Grants to support Local Media Outlets in Albania

The three-year project: “Strengthening Media Freedom, Professionalism and Journalists’ Safety in Albania” is implemented by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Albania (BIRN Albania), in cooperation with Science for Innovation Development Centre (SCiDEV) and Qendra Faktoje.

The project is awarded within the EU funded Call: “Civil Society Facility and Media Programme 2022 and Thematic Programme for Human Rights and Democracy 2022-2023”. In the framework of this project, BIRN Albania has opened a call for 3 (three) Sub-Grants.

Objectives

• The overall objective of this call for proposals is:
  • Strengthen overall media professionalism, including internal codes of conduct and accuracy, by increasing technical, editorial and financial resources to report independently, ethically and in a gender-balanced way on human rights abuses, fundamental rights violations and underreported topics relevant to local communities.
• The specific objective of this call for proposal are:
  • Enhancing local media outlets (NGOs) production, targeting specific audiences, particularly youth, women and minority/vulnerable groups, through technical, editorial and financial support.

Funding Information

• Indicative Budget available for this call of proposal: EUR 40,000.
• BIRN Albania will grant EUR 8,000 – 15,000 to three successful applicants interested in this open call, with duration of action from 10 months to 12 months. Any grant requested under this call for proposals must cover 100% of total eligible costs of the action.

Type of Activities 

• Production and publication of articles and multimedia content on human rights abuses, fundamental rights violations, local government accountability and underreported topics relevant to local communities, targeting specific audiences, particularly youth women and minority/vulnerable groups.
• Submission Freedom of Information requests to relevant public bodies, exercising the right to implementation of the FoI laws, for articles on central and local government accountability.
• Joint meetings of local media with representatives of local CSOs and community members in order to increase collaboration between civil society organizations/community members and journalists in prioritising the content production in the up mentioned fields.
• Involvement in capacity building activities (trainings and mentoring) provided by Project partners.

Expected Results

• Media articles, fact checking and other multimedia content (video, visualizations, podcasts, etc) on human rights abuses, fundamental rights violations, local government accountability and underreported topics relevant to local communities, will be produced and published by the grant beneficiaries.
• Freedom of Information requests to relevant public bodies will be submitted by the grant beneficiaries
• Joint meetings with local representatives (CSOs and community member) conducted by the grant beneficiaries.
• Active participation of the grant beneficiaries on networking and exchange meetings, training and mentoring activities, organised by the contracting authority.

Eligibility Criteria

• In order to be eligible for a grant, the applicant must be:
  • a non-governmental organization registered and acting in the territory of Albania for more than 12 months from the date of application;
  • have an active, periodically updated media outlet;
  • non-profit making;
  • directly responsible for the preparation and management of the action;
  • have previous experience (during the last 12 months) in implementing grants on media sector.

For more information, visit BIRN.