Grant Opportunity for NGOs worldwide to Address Food Security & Income Generation in South Africa, Malawi & Zimbabwe

Deadline: 30 January 2015

The United States Global Development Lab invites grant proposals from eligible entities around the world for its second round of Resilience Innovation Challenge 2014-2017. The current call Resilience Innovation Challenge for Food Security and Improved Income Generation (RIC4FIG) focuses on the sourcing, developing, and scaling of transformative technologies and approaches. These technologies and approaches should strengthen resilience to food insecurity and limited opportunities for income generation that are associated with climate variability and limited infrastructure overlay by high burden of HIV/AIDS.

The grants will support development of innovative approaches and technologies for

• Promoting life, entrepreneurship skills and developing contextually responsive models for launching highly profitable businesses that would reduce vulnerability to food insecurity and promote opportunities for income generation taking account of specific contexts in target communities in South Africa and Malawi.
• Developing low cost environment friendly approaches and technologies to increase agricultural yield per acreage.
• Developing models or approaches for agricultural markets of the future that promote new types of networks and distribution methods to catalyze enterprise and narrow the gap from farm to market.

Grant Phases and amount

1. Solution Development – Total 6 grant awards from US$ 15,000 to US$ 35,000
2. Piloting – Total 3 grants awards from US$35,000 to US$ 65,000
3. Scaling – Total 2 grant awards from US$ 75,000 to US$ 125,000

Note the Key Dates

• 30 January 2015 – Concept Note Application Deadline
• 3 March 2015 – Notification to selected applicants and invitation to submit full proposal
• 31 March 2015 – Full application submission deadline
• 1 May 2015 – Date for notification of award for Phase 1

Priority Intervention Pathways

1. Improve Life and Entrepreneurship skills (changing mindset while providing entrepreneurial skills set) – solutions that will empower target communities with life and entrepreneurial skills that promote optimism (positive outlook) and a sense of self-determination while encouraging community connectedness (a social infrastructure).
2. Diversify local economy for resilience – solutions that will substantially empower target communities by diversifying their livelihoods using simple but highly profitable farm and non-farm businesses and solutions that also create opportunities for better financial inclusion through savings and access to credit.
3. Transform agricultural practices and markets for resilience – solutions that disrupt the status quo by substantially building the agency of rural farmers to take more control of efficient agricultural production process, as well as the agricultural markets. The pathway has two innovation challenges (3 & 4 listed below).

Innovation Challenges

1. Improve Life and Entrepreneurship skills (changing mindset while providing entrepreneurial skills set) – Develop models and approaches or technologies for promoting life and entrepreneurship skills that would reduce vulnerability to food insecurity and promote opportunities for income generation taking into account specific contexts in target communities in South Africa and Malawi.
2. Diversify local economy for resilience – Develop contextually responsive models for launching highly profitable businesses that would reduce vulnerability to food insecurity and promote opportunities for income generation in target communities in South Africa, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
3. Scaling sustainable agricultural practices – Develop low cost environmentally friendly approaches and technologies to increase agricultural yield per acreage.
4. Catalyzing Agricultural markets – Develop models or approaches for agricultural markets of the future that promote new types of networks and distribution methods to catalyze enterprise and narrow the gap from farm to market.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applications can be made by teams of university students, faculty and student-faculty collaborations from established universities worldwide. Applicants can also be teams of individuals who are not university students.
• Applicants can also be non-government organizations, faith-based organizations, foundations, colleges and universities, community based organizations, civic groups, private businesses, business and trade unions.
• Applicants must be legally recognized entities, formally registered under applicable law.
• Government agencies, non-incorporated entities, and individuals not affiliated with any legally recognized entity are not eligible to apply.
• Applications must be written and submitted in English.
• Applications must be submitted via the web-based platform. Those submitted via regular mail, facsimile, or email will not be considered for evaluation.

The concept note should include the following – concise application title, intervention pathway, innovation challenge and country/context applied for, and a brief description of the proposed solution.

For more information, please visit RIC4FIG.