Grants

Grants are an effective development tool that allows local ownership, innovative outcomes and lasting results. Creative quickly adapts to local conditions and implements grants, regardless of the difficulty, size, scope or environmental complexity of the program. Creative’s headquarters and field staff work closely with grantees during all phases of the process, providing guidance with concept and application development, creating and refining program activities, and assisting with award management.  

Our hands-on approach empowers our partners to not only achieve positive results for communities, individuals, and our donors but it also increases the likelihood that these results will be lasting. 

Creative delivers on its commitment to locally led and owned development with small, high-impact grants to serve communities suffering from violence, lack of opportunity, inequity and inadequate government services. Creative manages an estimated $20 million annually across more than 500 grants for USAID and other donors. 
 

Leland Kruvant: Using grants to achieve programmatic goals from Creative Associates Int’l on Vimeo.

Stabilization 

Creative is working in Northeast Syria to improve the living conditions of returnees, internally displaced persons and the local population through agricultural and vocational assistance. Agricultural and Livelihoods Stabilization Partnerships II (ALSP) was able to reach the Shahail in Deir Ez-Zor, a region known for its complex tribal dynamics, thanks to a grant to Sam for Development, a local civil society organization. With Sam for Development’s strong local knowledge and connections, ALSP was able to provide much-needed assistance to 805 livestock herders — administering more than 300,000 dosages of vaccines and medicines to protect their sheep, goats, and cows. The effectiveness of Creative’s grant oversight enabled German Federal Foreign Office funds to provide crucial social and economic assistance in this hard-to-reach location. 

Political Transitions 

Creative uses grants to leverage the ideas and influence of key actors and leaders, encouraging local ownership, and supporting local initiatives to affect change. Our grant-making processes provide the flexibility to test and adapt assumptions and approaches in complex environments and leverage the experience of our partners — from local government institutions, to traditional CSOs, to informal women and youth groups. 

Creative worked with women in Northeast Nigeria through a series of grants to offer safe spaces for women to discuss sensitive topics and expand their influence as community decision-makers and advocates. Funded by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, the project created the Women for Peace Platforms that empowered more than 1,200 women through these grants, increasing their engagement in civic activities, capacity for collective action to reduce violent extremist organizations and conflict risks, and familiarity with local security actors. 

Citizen Security 

Creative uses grants to implement a strategic place-based and public-health approach to crime and violence prevention. We work with local, community-based organizations and municipalities on interventions that include family-based counseling, cognitive-behavioral therapy, violence interruption, outreach centers, vocational centers, crime and violence observatories, urban renewal, and community policing. For example, USAID’s Community, Family and Youth Resilience 

program in the Caribbean issued grants for family counseling to reduce risk factors of youth susceptible to gang recruitment and delinquent behavior.  

Governance 

We provide assistance to grassroots and community-based organizations that have unique capacities to intervene, establish trust, and make meaningful contributions to peace in their communities. In the USAID-supported Mali Peacebuilding, Stabilization and Reconciliation program, grants under our project have been awarded to support community-driven and -supported events, such as dialogues among local officials, community leaders, youth, and families to discuss ways to support youth and protect them from being recruited by violent extremist organizations. Grants have also been awarded to groups who facilitate training and dialogue between farmer and herder groups who are often in conflict over diminishing land resources, opening channels of communication and fostering understanding and trust. 

Education 

Creative uses grants to empower local civil society organizations, universities, schools and related organizations to promote sustainable learning outcomes and integrated support for high-quality, inclusive education. Creative also issues national grants that promote teacher professional development, curriculum improvement, policy development and school management support.  

For example, the USAID-funded Northern Education Initiative Plus (NEI Plus) used grants to help communities set up non-formal learning centers to increase access to education for out-of-school children and youth, as well as strengthen national and state systems to deliver quality education. Creative issued grants to support school needs establish reading camps in Ethiopia and support quality education in other conflict and complex environments. 

Economic Growth 

Creative supports grantees in mainstreaming gender diversity and inclusion to reflect the diversity of the communities that our work reaches — including youth with visual and hearing impairments and cognitive and physical disabilities. Creative’s grantees focus not only on our youth beneficiaries but their families as well, with the aim of fostering their growth and helping them successfully transition to the labor market. In Nicaragua, our program for at-risk youth utilized family-based modeling to provide workforce development and livelihoods skills to nearly 400 youth with disabilities — including 80 especially vulnerable youth who were successfully able to obtain jobs, start their own businesses, or pursue apprenticeships. 

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