The Humanitarian Innovation Fund has announced the second call for expressions of interests followed by full proposals from shortlisted applicants for the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) Large Grant facility for projects up to £150,000 aimed at supporting organizations and individuals to identify, nurture and share innovative solutions to the challenges facing operational agencies in the delivery of effective humanitarian aid.
Large grants will be allocated to projects with an implementation period of up to 18 months. These grants will principally support the development, implementation and testing of an innovation (stages 3 and 4).
Objectives
- Enabling and supporting humanitarian innovators to move creative ideas through the innovation process;
- Supporting them in building new partnerships with key actors;
- Enabling the lessons from grant funded projects and from analysis of innovation processes in humanitarian contexts to be disseminated more widely;
- Strengthening existing relationships between humanitarian agencies, academics and those in the private sector engaged in innovation processes.
What type of projects will be funded?
The HIF will fund innovations that are at any of the 5 stages of the innovation process (1-recognition, 2-invention, 3-development, 4-implementation and 5-diffusion) and that will contribute to improving the relevance, appropriateness, coverage, efficiency and / or effectiveness of humanitarian aid relative to existing practices.
What types of humanitarian interventions are targeted by the HIF?
The definition used for humanitarian aid is taken from Global Humanitarian Assistance. This excludes any long term development assistance. The definition provides some useful examples of traditional responses to humanitarian crises:
- material relief assistance and services (shelter, water, medicines etc.);
- emergency food aid (short-term distribution and supplementary feeding programmes);
- relief coordination, protection and support services (coordination, logistics and communications).
- reconstruction relief and rehabilitation (repairing pre-existing infrastructure as opposed to longer-term activities designed to improve the level of infrastructure)
- disaster prevention and preparedness (disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, contingency stocks and planning).
Any geographical setting that applies to the definition of Global Humanitarian Assistance of humanitarian response setting is eligible to apply.
Last date for submission of expression of interest is August 28, 2011.
Shortlisted applicants will then be invited to complete a full application by October 16, 2011.
For more information and details, you can visit this link.
