Ford Foundation Research on Sexuality and Youth

The Ford Foundation has announced a new Request for Proposals entitled "Sexuality, Health, and Rights Among Youth in the United States: Transforming Public Policy and Public Understanding Through Social Research" designed to support and prepare researchers to take on the challenges of social science sexuality research in the 21st century. The overall goal of the program is to strengthen the capacity of social science researchers to inform public policy and public understanding of sexuality-related issues from a human rights perspective.

Amount: $500,000 (across 2 - 3 years)

Date due: February 1, 2010

Through this RFP the foundation will support research projects that combine three areas of activity: social science research; training of graduate students; and strategic communications to inform public policy or public conversations. Each project must include plans for all three areas of activity. Proposals that explore the role of structural inequalities, stigma and discrimination, and mechanisms of social exclusion related to gender, sexual orientation, class, race and ethnicity, and their intersections are of particular interest, as are proposals exploring how youth and adults in local communities seek to understand and address sexuality, health, and human rights through a range of individual and collective actions. All proposals must demonstrate how they would inform public policy or public dialogue on targeted sexuality or reproductive health and rights issues.

For more information, click here.