The 2026 Irish Aid Global Citizenship Education Grants Call for Proposals is now open
The call for proposals can be found at this link. It also includes links to the Guidelines, FAQ documents, as well as information on DEAR co-funding.
Key dates include:
- Tuesday 28 October, 5.00pm - Deadline for receipt of eligibility forms: Organisations who fail to meet the eligibility deadline cannot be considered.
- Friday 31 October 2025 - Organisations will be notified of their eligibility
- Friday 28 November, 12.00noon - Please note: Irish Aid has extended the closing date for applications. The completed application form, signed by the legal representative of the organisation (e.g. the CEO or the Chair of the Board) should be e-mailed to the Global Citizenship Education Mailbox. Please note, applications which are received after this date will not be considered. The Global Citizenship Education Mailbox email address is provided in the 2026 Call for Proposals.
- It is intended that the appraisal of applications will take place in Quarter 1 2026 and notification of funding decisions will issue in March 2026.
IDEA Support for the Grants Round:
- Grants Clinic for Irish Aid Global Citizenship Education Funding Applications: This will take place on Thursday, 13 November (TBC), 09.30am – 11.30am, online.
- Improving your Results Framework Workshop: This will take place on Tuesday 18 November (TBC), 10am - 12.00pm, online.
As in recent years, we are inviting any other actors who are not yet members of IDEA to these training events. All training events are free of charge.
Deadline for application is Wednesday, 29 October, 5.00pm.
After three remarkable years with IDEA, we are sad to share that Anya Sparynska is moving abroad to begin a new adventure. During her time with us, Anya made an indelible mark - first by shaping a pioneering programme role, and later by guiding us in a capacity development role that strengthened our impact across Ireland’s development education sector. From designing and implementing innovative initiatives to building partnerships and capacity across our member organisations, Anya has left IDEA stronger, more connected, and more ambitious for the future. “I am sad to leave at such a pivotal time in IDEA: we are faced with unspeakable horror, as the need for justice and accountability grows ever more urgent. I have seen, however, our members and staff respond with creativity, humanity and dedication to these challenging times and find inspiration in it, even at this darkest hour. A desire to be close to my family and the pressure of the housing crisis have driven me to Brussels, but I know I will be back as Ireland - it’s passionate, brave and kind people - now feels like home. I will be sure to follow IDEA and our members’ work closely in the coming year and hope to stay in touch! “Working at IDEA has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Seeing ideas and passion turn into real impact and change has been incredibly fulfilling - I’ll carry those lessons, and the very special friendships made along the way with me always.”
Date: Tuesday, 04 November, from 3.30–4.30pm Location: Online via Zoom IDEA is thrilled to invite members to the online launch of our new “Theory of Impact for Global Citizenship Education” on Tuesday, 04 November, from 3.30–4.30pm, Online via Zoom. During this session, we will present the model, share insights into the process behind its development, and explore how it will be used to strengthen impact across the sector. We will also introduce a new tool in progress, an interactive data visualisation map designed to showcase our collective impact as a network. For many years, IDEA and its members have been grappling with the concept of impact in Development Education/Global Citizenship Education (GCE). As GCE practitioners, tracking impact helps us to identify how, where and with whom our work is creating positive change, as well as investigating areas in which our impact could be stronger. Furthermore, we can also benefit from examining the collective impact of GCE carried out by the wide-ranging work of IDEA members, and from exploring how these impacts contribute to the major social changes to which the GCE community aspires. Driven therefore by the need to understand how projects and programmes are collectively “making a difference” in IDEA we looked at models that could help us visualise and capture GCE “impact networks”. We formulated our vision of impact and then a theory of how we expect this desired impact to be achieved to allow us to map our activities and collect data to corroborate that theory. This Theory of Impact model is how we hope to illustrate this complex GCE impact network. Building on work done by IDEA over many years including building sectoral capacity in using Results Frameworks for GCE, our Quality & Impact working group, engagement with Irish Aid on their Performance Measurement Framework (PMF), and the successful roll-out of a Code of Good Practice for DE/GCE, this Theory of Impact represent the next stage of our effort to ‘develop a consistent approach to measuring impact among the sector’. We are therefore thrilled to invite you to the presentation of our ‘Theory of Impact for GCE’. At this online presentation, we will tell you about the process that led to the creation of this model, how it will be used and what we hope it could bring to the sector. We will also touch on a new tool being developed based on the model, which should allow the creation of an interactive data visualisation map of our collective impact as a network. Join us as we launch into this exciting new phase of our Impact Measurement work. Join us as we begin this exciting new phase of our Impact Measurement work. Register below!
