VSO’s Action Grants programme supports VSO Supporters to deliver awareness raising projects that will engage a wide range of audiences throughout the UK with international development issues.

Action Grants are awarded for projects that meet the following criteria:

• Increase knowledge and understanding about global issues
• Challenge the attitudes and behaviours that perpetuate global poverty
• Inspire others to take positive action against poverty

• Raise awareness of a development issue (such as, Climate Change, Refugees, Trade or one of VSO’s Goal areas).
• Increase global awareness and promote cross-cultural understanding.
• Explore the links between people in the UK and in developing countries, and the impact our actions have on others.
• Challenge negative stereotypes and attitudes about the developing world, provoking thought and self-questioning.
• Motivate others to take personal action (e.g. changing consumer behaviour campaigning, introducing greener policies, fundraising).

• Activities planned by an organisation not an individual
• Activities aimed at fundraising
• Equipment purchase or salaries

Before applying for an Action Grant, why not have a look at how other VSO supporters have used our grants? We also have a range of resources to help put your ideas into action.

• Got more questions before you're ready to apply?
• Apply now for a grant of up to £200

Action Grants have been used to support a diverse range of development awareness projects icluding photo exhibitions, production of a DVD to school linking and Global Awareness activity days in schools. Here are some examples of how Action Grants have been used in 2007/8:

Tom Wipperman used his Action Grant to raise awareness of Bangladeshi rickshaw pullers through a month-long photo exhibition in an East London gallery. Tom’s exhibition used photojournalism to challenge people’s stereotypes and increase knowledge of the reality of Bangladesh, as well as promoting cross-cultural understanding and relationship building with the Bangladeshi Diaspora community of East London.

‘So many people in the UK just think of floods when they think of Bangladesh,’ says Tom Wipperman, a VSO Youth for Development volunteer who spent 15 months working in Dhaka, the sprawling capital of Bangladesh. ‘Natural disasters are the only thing that ever make the news. I think the exhibition has shown people the Bangladesh beyond the floods and famines.’

Ellen Jackson’s Global Awareness Day increased knowledge and understanding of African culture within her primary school. With a Senegalese drumming group, a global school lunch and activities ranging from ‘Fair Trade and Carbon Footprints’ to ‘Where does our food come from?’ the Global Awareness Day was vibrant, engaging and well received by staff and children alike. As a result, the school has revived its link with a school in Ghana, now only uses Fair Trade tea, coffee and sugar in the staff room, and has identified Global Awareness as one of its area of focus in 2009.

Ronnie Carvell used her Action Grant to promote school linking between schools in Worcestershire and the Gambia. Using her grant to facilitate the initial relationship building, training sessions and the sharing of ideas, resources and correspondence, Ronnie has helped to establish links between eight schools. Through promoting this cross-cultural relationship, she has created links that continuously raise awareness of global issues and different cultures within the school communities. Since Ronnie made the initial links, some of the UK based teachers have been inspired to visit their Gambian school and learn more about the culture. After receiving communication from their link schools, teachers and children have all commented on the how wonderful it is to get first hand knowledge and feel they know more because of being connected to real people across the globe.