The project summary is a brief introduction and justification of the proposal, and you may leave this until you finish all of other sections. It should contain the problem you choose from those topics for the project to solve. In this funding, the problem could be the financial problems of migration and development including higher cost of bank transfer, inconvenient bank services, etc. The other content is the solutions to the problem. A good summary will start with the problem and its severity, the solutions to the problem and its impact to the society, the expected results, and the goal and objectives which the project will finally reach. Your proposal should match to these criteria which the MDF will use to decide if your proposal is competitive:
- Quality and completeness of application;
- Relevance of proposal to the Fund objectives;
- Project Innovativeness;
- Management capability and experience of proposers;
- Financial viability;
- Financial contribution of the proposer;
- Ability to promote project ownership by local community;
- Sustainability of project or project impacts;
- Ability to replicate project in other communities;
- Correspondence to local community needs;
- Sound and effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms;
- Projects that include local and Diaspora collaboration and cost-sharing.
The problem statement is critical in the proposal because it is the place in which you try to convince the reviewers that the project is worth doing. You can give a precise description of the problematic situation by using quotes, live examples, references, research data and published articles which would be very helpful. You also need to explain how your ideas and solutions to the problem are locally informed and are designed to address the needs of the migrants and their business. Giving evidences and facts from local events will greatly support your application.
This is an example of problem statement: migrants in Kandi of Benin are suffering from higher costs and inconvenient services when they tried to use the local banking systems to do their financial and business transfer, and this has negative impacts on the local population and business developments. The proposal is designed to offer solutions to solve these problems by establishing a new banking network with low-cost services, multi money transfer methods, and electronic banking services. The system will increase personal and business financial activities and decrease the costs.
