Call for Proposals: Media Action MAJOR Grant Program (Jordan)

The main objective of this project is to contribute to a safer and more inclusive environment for Jordanian journalists and media outlets, resulting in more diverse media content reaching wider audiences. The overall strategy of the project aims to:

• Promote an enabling environment where journalists can work safely.
• Serve the interests of diverse audiences, with media producing inclusive and relevant content.
• Enhance the resilience of media through organizational and professional knowledge and skills building.

Objectives

• The overall objective of the Media Resilience Grant is to provide core funding in order to advance or scale up promising media outlets or innovations seeking to build their organizational capacity and financial sustainability.
• Producing independent, relevant and inclusive content, these media outlets or initiatives should reach diverse and under-served audiences in Jordan (such as, but not limited to: teenagers and young adults, women and girls, marginalized communities and regions, people with a disability).
• The grant selection will pay specific attention to inclusive media and embrace new entrants to the sector, with emphasis on supporting innovative outlets and ideas that lead by example.

Benefits

• Innovation: Thinking outside the box, new ideas, unconventional alliances, etc.
• Diversity and inclusion: Targeting marginalized groups, such as youth, women and girls, and people with special needs.
• Feasibility: Having a clear plan that includes specific success indicators, an appropriate timeframe, safety standards, and a strategy.
• Impact: Achieving tangible and measurable change in the organization, content, media sector, or society at large.

Funding Information

• Each awarded grant can receive funding up to a maximum budget of 40,000 Euros.
• The maximum duration of the grant is 8 months. The envisaged start date of the grant is September 2025.

Eligible Costs

• Core operational/editorial costs (rent, staff, administrative expenses);
• Freelance fees and consultancy costs;
• Software licenses, data visualization and publishing resources, hosting/streaming server costs (not hardware);
• Digital/physical safety support, safe working tools or software;
• Technical/production costs (hiring equipment or crew).

Eligible Projects

• Developments to improve the newsroom or organizational capacities;
• Stimulating the production and publication of innovative, inclusive and gender sensitive content, tailored for specific target audience(s);
• Testing or developing cross-media formats and innovative journalism approaches;
• Increasing audience engagement with content producers and increasing dialogue (post-production experiences);
• Experiments to increase or diversify revenue streams from journalistic content.

Eligibility Criteria

• The grant should focus on the resilience of the media outlet, initiative or start-up that is applying for core funding (not a third party).
• Eligible types of grant recipients:
  • Media startups (ups-starts)
  • Innovative media initiatives
  • Independent media organizations

Ineligibility Criteria

• The implementation of trainings, fellowships or similar activities aimed at external parties (such as journalists/trainees outside of the media outlet that is applying) are not eligible under this grant.
• As such, training institutes, media support organizations and similar are not eligible for this grant.

For more information, visit Free Press Unlimited.