Frequently Asked Questions

Grow Civic Support Programme is an in-kind support programme implemented under the Civic Space Project that is funded by the European Union. It aims to support activists and civil society organisations in building organisational capacities, enhancing democracy and human rights, promoting and supporting peace and reconciliation, facilitating networking and partnership between mono and multi-communities in Cyprus as well as with CSOs in other EU Member and IPA states.

It is not a grant programme that contains a transfer of funds, rather it is an in-kind support programme. As such, the costs of services or supplies required by the approved actions are directly compensated by the Civic Space Project to the service providers/suppliers. 

Grow Civic supports activists legally residing in Cyprus, registered or unregistered civil society organisations, citizen’s initiatives, groups, platforms, initiatives in Cyprus that work for public benefit. 

The eligible request owners are slightly different for each support category, as listed below:

Requests are accepted through the online Grow Civic Information System (MIS) that can be accessed from www.civicspace.eu website or through this link: https://mis.civicspace.eu/en. Simple request forms in English and Turkish languages are available for potential requesters. Support requests in each of these two languages are accepted.

All activists and CSOs wishing to request support from Grow Civic can ask for assistance from the Help Desk before presenting their request.  

You can access the help desk by phone, by e-mail, from the Grow Civic Information System (MIS), via messages from Civic Space social media accounts, or by face-to-face meetings. Please do not forget to make an appointment by mail or phone if you require a face-to-face meeting. Questions to the Help Desk are typically answered in one working day, and within five working days at the latest.

The rights-based approach requires the consideration of institutions, groups, or individuals who have responsibility or duty in an ideal world, to provide the services, protect the rights or take the measures you intend to cover in your action. These so-called duty-bearers could be local bodies, “ministries”, “municipalities”, universities, CSOs, private sector, professional organisations, international organisations, community leaders, “parliamentarians”, etc. For each action, different duty bearers might have different roles and responsibilities. If these actors are not fulfilling their responsibilities or duties, and if you do nothing to change this in your action, this would mean that things continue to be the same and you forever would need to continue raising funds for filling in the gaps left out by them. Thereby, it can be said that the rights-based approach is not only based on the concept of a social state, but it also aims for the sustainability of actions and results. 

There is further and more detailed information about the rights-based approach and how to mainstream it in your actions in the Key Concepts section/document. 

To make it easier you can follow these steps:

1. Consider that you are living in an ideal world, which institutions, groups or individuals will be fulfilling the activities/services/measures that you will be implementing in your action? 
2. Contemplate their roles and duties. What are they doing? What should they ideally be doing/ providing?  
3. Contemplate on which roles and duties are performed or under-performed and which ones are not being done by the relevant duty-bearers you identified? 
4. Now focus on your action and the results/outcomes you want to achieve in the action you are designing. You can consider collaborating with the relevant duty bearers for the duties they are performing to make your action stronger. For duties you identified as under-performed, you might consider building the capacities of the relevant duty-bearers to ensure proper performance. And for those that are not handled at all, you might consider either advocating towards the relevant dutybearers and remind them of their roles and responsibilities and/or collaborate with them in building their capacities to take responsibility. 
5. Once you decide on the approach above, now you can start thinking and planning about the specific activities you need to implement within your strategy. For example, if you will be building capacity, then most probably you will need to conduct seminars, training, study visits, research, and reports. If it is advocacy, then you will most probably be using research, social media campaigns, lobbying directly with the duty-bearers, petitions, collaborating with other CSOs that work in the same field to increase the effect and impact of your advocacy campaign, etc. These are surely examples and the types of activities you will need to pick will be very much related to the dutybearers character and approach. 
6. Now that you know all the details, you can add the duty bearers you identified, the duties and responsibilities you would like to see them fulfilling, your strategy to include them in your action (advocacy and awareness-raising vs. collaboration and capacity building, or vice versa.)

Yes, this is possible. However, there is a total maximum amount that each activist or CSO can receive for the whole duration of the Programme (till March 2023). Activists can receive support up to 7,000 EUR and CSOs up to 15,000 EUR. An activist or a CSO cannot request or be provided support for more than one action simultaneously. For new support to be requested/provided, the other one must be successfully finalised.

Request owners will be informed via MIS within 30 working days following the submission of their forms. They will be informed about the status of their request with one of the following results: ‘eligible’, ‘ineligible’, or ‘revisions requested’. For requests requiring revisions, the result's issuance (eligible or ineligible) will not exceed 60 working days. This can be longer for actions that request additional time for revisions.  

The maximum support amounts differ between support categories. So, depending on the type of request owner and the characteristic of the planned action, the relevant category should be identified and the maximum amount for that category should not be exceeded. The maximum support amounts for each category are as follows:

The Grow Civic Support Programme has eligible and ineligible costs. In general, costs related to travel, event participation, visual material design and production, printing, catering, venue cost, etc. are all eligible costs, as long as they are related to your activities. The ineligible costs on the other hand consist of costs/payments related to profit-making activities, scholarships, salaries, refurbishments or renovations, equipment purchases, etc. The detailed lists of eligible and ineligible costs can be found in “Section IV of the Grow Civic In-Kind Support Programme Request for Support Guidelines”.

The Grow Civic Programme, in line with the rights-based approach, seeks for consideration and integration of cross-cutting issues; first and foremost, the following: accessibility (the rights of people with disabilities), environment protection/ecology, gender, and youth inclusion. There are relevant questions in the request form in which you are being asked for what types of strategies you will use to ensure that these aspects are included in your action either in the form of specific activities, policies, and/or specific measures. 

Such measures vary from ensuring the equal participation of genders, young people, and people with disabilities in your project activities, to organising specific activities to include young women with disabilities or to providing specific measures to enable women’s participation (e.g., provision of childcare, accessible venues, vegan or vegetarian catering, non-use of plastic bottles, energy-saving bulbs, recycling). When and if there is a research component in your action, you can make sure that all genders and ages are represented in the survey. Or when and if you will be creating a website or video you can consider sign language and subtitles for people with different disabilities). In your monitoring of action results, you can consider assessing how different groups of people (disaggregated by gender, age, disability, etc.) are being affected by your intervention. 

You can find detailed information and concrete examples of activities, policies, and measures you can implement, in the guidelines that we have prepared for you. They can be accessed at https://civicspace.eu/sivil-alan-kutuphanesi/.

There is no minimum duration for Grow Civic supported actions. However, different maximum durations are set for different support categories as listed below:

All activities supported by Grow Civic should be finalised latest by 1 April 2023. 

All activists and CSOs wishing to request support from Grow Civic can ask for assistance from the Help Desk at all stages: pre-request, request and implementation stages. Help Desk is accessible through 09.30-12:30 and 14:30-17.30 hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. You can access the help desk by phone, by e-mail, from the Grow Civic Information System (MIS), messages from Civic Space social media accounts, or by face-to-face meetings. Please do not forget to make an appointment by mail or phone if you require a face-to-face meeting.   

Phone number: +90 392 227 6505

Grow Civic Information System (MIS): https://mis.civicspace.eu

E-mail: sivilbuyu@sivilalan.eu OR info@civicspace.eu

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/civicspaceeu  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/civicspaceeu

Twitter: https://twitter.com/civicspaceeu

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/civicspaceeu

Civic Space office address: Hüseyin Küçük Sokak Şeytanoğlu Apt. No:3/B Köşklüçiftlik Nicosia

Questions to the Help Desk are typically answered in one working day, and within five working days at the latest. 

Please note that our Help Desk will not assist you in writing or filling out the form or make any compliance check for your request form. Rather, the help desk support you will be receiving will consist of clarifications and/or explanations regarding the eligibility criteria, request process, budget issues, the MIS, questions on the request for support form, the eligibility and compliance checks, information about other Grow Civic supported actions and about potential partners or networks, etc.  

Before consulting the HelpDesk, we recommend that you review the Grow Civic Support Desk Guide, as well as other relevant guides, visibility materials and information on our website. Help Desk Guide and all information about Grow Civic can be found at https://civicspace.eu/destekler/sivil-buyu-destek-programi/ .