Dear RAISE participants and JEF sections,

We are pleased to share that through RAISE – Resilience And Integration for Sustainable European peace, Work Plan 2025 project JEF Europe will be funding local activities across Europe. 

About RAISE?

RAISE project seeks to explore the contributions of women* and LGBTQI+ people, particularly young individuals, to positive peace. The objectives of the project aim to empower young people with the skills to promote positive peace through active participation in intercultural dialogue, peace-building, and conflict transformation. It focuses on providing knowledge of positive and negative peace from the perspectives of these groups and encourages practical local actions, such as campaigns and educational activities, to promote peace. The project also seeks to foster transnational dialogue and collaboration among youth from diverse backgrounds to support positive peace. 

The main aim of the micro-grants:

As part of the 3rd phase of the RAISE project, this micro-granting scheme serves as an impactful means for volunteers on the ground to employ the skills that they acquired during our training sessions in Derry and Warsaw. The main goal of these micro-grants is to fund local actions that foster peace and peacebuilding, promote positive peace as a way to multiply the learnings, connections and the ideas that emerged during the trainings that took place in Derry and Warsaw. These actions are aimed to promote the implementation of the Council of Europe PACE Resolution 2378 (2021) Strengthening the role of young people in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, among other international tools, as well as enabling the young people who took part in the training sessions to put into practice what they have learned through this Work Plan.

The local actions can be for example: Europe@School activities, debates, non-formal educational activities and local campaigns, advocacy actions, which will be developed preferably in collaboration with local JEF sections and volunteers. The participants to these training sessions and other JEF volunteers will have the possibility of implementing local actions with the support of micro-grants. The actions shall include bringing non-formal education activities to educational centres focused on the stories of women* and LGBTQI+ Youth on peace and peacebuilding. 

These local actions will take place in 10 CoE countries, and their outcomes will be shared during the final conference, which will take place in December 2025.

Application process:

All participants to the previous RAISE activities, as well as JEF Europe sections can apply on multiple levels, from the local, regional and national ones. We encourage RAISE training Derry & Warsaw participants who are not part of JEF sections to reach out to your nearest JEF local section, in order to implement the action together while receiving logistical support. Activities must take place in Council of Europe countries due to the nature of funding. 

To apply, you will have to fill this online form until 14th of August 2025 23:59 CEST. 

The selection committee will choose the applications based on needs and motivation that will benefit the most from this project. The maximum amount of grant is 500 EUR per activity. The applicants will receive the answers by the end of August or beginning of September. 

Local actions must take place between September and the 6th of December. No cost incurred after December 6th 2025 can be considered as eligible for the grant.

Financing instalments:

After a successful application, the selected sections/participants will have to fill a payment request for pre-financing 50% of the allocated grant for the activity (250 EUR). Upon successful implementation and duly reporting to JEF Europe, the second instalment will be sent. 

The local action must be fully funded on its own (co-funding is not allowed) and it must be strictly related to the topic of the Work Plan. All planned costs will have to be double-checked and approved by the JEF Europe team. Following the EYF Guidelines, the organiser of the activity cannot receive any compensation from organising the event.

As outputs, the organisers for the local actions must keep and send a signed list of participants, a final narrative and financial report and all the original receipts via post. Only costs that have corresponding invoices and receipts will be covered by the grant.  All the templates will be provided by JEF Europe and continuous support will be given throughout the implementation of the project in order to meet these deliverables.

Without a signed participants list, the organizers will not receive the final installment and will most possibly be required to compensate the first installment to JEF Europe. If you have any questions or concerns please reach out to our secretary general Brigita Krasniqi, sg@jef.eu