Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 6 July 2022.
Well, the Wales and Africa small grants scheme, which actually was contracted to the Wales Council for Voluntary Action to deliver, did end on 31 March. But, a procurement exercise put the contract back out to tender earlier this year, and the WCVA will continue to implement and to manage that small grants scheme. It's now open, round 1 of the 2022-25 Wales and Africa small grants scheme, and the application deadline is 24 July.
The importance of those small grants is that, although they may sound a small amount of money, in terms of our priorities in the Welsh Government and the pressures on our budget, we still believe it is important to invest in Wales and Africa. And these small sums of money can make a huge difference, working with partners on projects relating to health, climate change, environment, lifelong learning and sustainable livelihoods. And these are projects that are led, as I said, by African partners, by those NGOs, working with many groups across Wales. And I think what's important is that we have worked to support many communities during the pandemic. We've devoted millions of pounds-worth of PPE to Namibia via the Phoenix Project. I seem to remember there were some adverse comments from your party about the fact that we were doing that. We believe very strongly that we should do that. Also, we support projects in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Lesotho, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda, and these are all projects where the outcomes are clearly having a huge impact on those communities.