Asian Neighbors Program Grants
Any nationality or citizenship. Proposals are especially welcome for joint projects conducted by participants from diverse backgrounds.
In today’s Asia, as societies undergo increasingly rapid change, people in the region face common challenges and issues. These include maintaining sustainable ecosystems and livelihoods for marginalized groups, enhancing cross-cultural understanding and coexistence, and ensuring peace and security. Given this situation, the question is how we can come together to make the region a more safe and caring place for everyone.
Answering this question requires each of us who lives in Asiaâ€â€along with our neighbors inside and outside our communities and countriesâ€â€to take action to solve our common problems, based on open and flexible networks. Such efforts will forge partnerships for upcoming generations and enrich the future of Asia. Our hope is that people living in the Asia of the future will find joy and hope in their daily lives, develop together, and learn from each other’s wisdom and experiences. This program seeks project proposals that can present new lifestyles and innovative social models for the sake of future generations.
Project proposals for the program must correspond to one of the following areas:
(1) Fostering mutual understanding and social actors
(2) Enhancing sustainable communities
(3) Forging social systems to address local issues
Submit an Application form (available on website) or send completed application by registered, courier mail.
Application includes:
- Project title
- Amount of grant requested
- Previous grants received from the Foundation
- Project length
- Issue to be addressed
- Type of research
- Primary area of the research
Please note that proposals of the sort listed below will not be considered suitable for a project in this program:
(a) Activities with an excessively limited number or range of participants and/or beneficiaries (e.g. scholarships, members limited to one organization, etc.).
(b) Activities with no tangible objectives or results in mind (e.g. conducting an event or aiming for "networking" alone, with no results or other output besides a project report).
(c) Activities focused primarily on research. (Such proposals may be suitable for the Toyota Foundation’s Research Grant Program.)
(d) Ongoing activities (e.g. those by an NGO or charity organization that regularly issues materials) or proposals to use the grant to cover the running cost of an organization. Please note that projects in this program must be new initiatives that start and end within the grant period, not something that is part of a longer project.
Applicants are divided into the three categories, as listed below, based on the scale of the proposed project (for more details please refer to Section VI, "Project Requirements"). Each applicant must choose the appropriate grant type based on the content of the proposed project.
(1) Up to 2 million yen over 2 years: This grant type is recommended for projects involving participants
(2) 3 to 8 million yen over 2 years: This grant type is recommended for projects involving participants in in one country who intend to carry out innovative, challenging activities in a single location or community. 4 different countries who seek synergy by bringing together their respective knowledge and experiences.
(3) Special grant: 10 to 15 million yen over 2 years: This is a special framework for a limited number of projects that tackle important common challenges facing the region or world. Projects should be based on multinational network(s) adequate to the project, and results should contribute to solving a wider global issue.