International bilateral agencies such as the AusAID, CIDA, Danida, DFID, JICA, SIDA and the USAID exist for the purpose of managing foreign aid programs. They also provide technical assistance in delivering development projects to their own ministries of foreign affairs as well as to the countries where these projects are implemented. They play an important role in providing funding for programs working to overcome poverty and improve overall human life conditions in poor and developing countries.
Interestingly, all these agencies have a special focus on building and promoting a strong civil society in countries. Under this policy objective, they allocate resources to provide funding to NGOs to implement small development projects in their own areas. Although this funding is just a small part of their overall aid budget, it still ends up to be a funding of several million dollars for NGOs.
Different agencies have different set of guidelines to provide funding to NGOs under their NGO support or cooperation programs. Some have very easy funding guidelines and accept proposals round the year and others have fixed deadlines or competitions. Moreover, many of these guidelines can vary from country to country. In such a situation, how does your organization identify what kind of opportunity is available in your country from these agencies?
We have done some online research to assist you in identifying what kind of opportunities can be available from these major bilateral agencies for NGOs. You can click on the following links to know more:
- AusAID – Australian Agency for International Development
- CIDA – Canadian International Development Agency
- Danida – Danish International Development Agency
- DFID – UK Department for International Development
- JICA – Japan International Cooperation Agency
- SIDA – Swedish International Development Agency
- USAID – United States Agency for International Development
