On 15 December 2022, the Board of Trustees of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation approved the results of the 2022 call for proposals of the Active Citizens Fund Portugal.

In all, 20 projects were selected in two main areas of intervention:

• Area A – Building NGO capacities for a more democratic society;
• Area B – Empowering vulnerable groups and respecting diversity.

The 7 projects selected under area A are essentially aimed at strengthening the capacity and sustainability of civil society, and also include complementary activities aimed at raising civic awareness and promoting democratic values.

The 13 projects selected under area B are concerned with the empowerment of vulnerable groups, and also include activities aimed at the promotion and support of human rights.

The projects were selected from more than 120 applications submitted in September 2022.
The amount requested of €3,599,754 far exceeded the available budget of €600,000.
In terms of geographical distribution, 13 of the supported projects are located outside the Metropolitan Areas of Lisbon and Porto. This result is justified by the positive discrimination in favour of these regions, adopted especially in this call, and represents the culmination of the efforts made since 2018 to achieve a more equitable countrywide distribution of the Programme’s support.

With the approval of these last projects, the Programme has now achieved an implementation rate in terms of commitments of 106.5%, i.e. the approved support (€10,442,667) already exceeds the amount made available by the EEA Grants for the whole seven years of its implementation. This was made possible by the guarantee of the Gulbenkian Foundation’s own resources.
In fact, since its inception in 2018, the Programme is expected to meet or exceed all targets envisaged and/or contracted with EEA Grants, namely:

• 176 projects were approved instead of the 150 planned;
• All the achievement and result goals foreseen in the 30 indicators contracted with the EEA Grants, for the four outcomes of the Programme, shall be at least achieved in relation to the projects contracted or to be contracted;
• Projects with donor-country partnerships accounted for 36% of major projects;
• The 72 projects approved outside the Metropolitan Areas of Lisbon and Porto have already exceeded double those supported in the previous period in that same territory, as well as the target of 54 projects set in the Foundation’s application to EEA Grants in 2017.

The call results, with the identification of the entities promoting the projects, are published on this website.

results