The budget of the Active Citizens Fund Portugal has just been incremented by 500.000 euros, as a result of the distribution of the EEA Grants reserve provided for in the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Donor Countries – Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway – and the Portuguese Government on May 22, 2017.

In addition to this, the Board of Trustees of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has decided to boost total funding for calls to reach 1 million euros through the Foundation’s resources. Thus, global financing of 9.34 million euros has passed to approximately 10.34 million euros.

This increase in funding, to be implemented in the 2021 and 2022 calls, is a recognition of the essential role that Civil Society Organizations have had and will continue to have in the coming post-pandemic period, namely because of the growing concerns and requests from citizens and society in general.

Due to the increase in the Programme’s financial envelope, it was decided to postpone the launch of this year’s calls until September 1, 2021. This postponement is related to the reconfiguration of the calls, which will focus on large projects – albeit with a smaller financial and temporal dimension than those of previous years – instead of small projects, as planned. In 2022, the intention remains to launch the last calls of the Active Citizens Fund Portugal, for small projects, during June.