Compared to an abstract, which you may be more familiar with, the summary paragraph is shorter and more summarized, and it has to be 250 words maximum. It is a brief introduction and justification of the proposal. Most importantly, it should contain the problem or developmental challenge. In this topic, the problem could be the problematic mothers’ or newborns’ health conditions, and lower newborn survival rates. One of these problems could be the target of the project and is needed to be included in the summary. The other content is the solutions to the problem, which mean the plan you design to solve the problem, is also needed to be included. A few of other sentences will be written for the goal, the objectives and the innovation. The attraction writing style will be maintained here to give reasons to the reviewers to read the rest of the proposal.
A good summary will start with the problem and its impact to the society, the proposed solutions to the problem, the expected results, and the goal which the project will finally reach. As the topic of saving lives at birth, we may start with one of the problems mentioned above, and one of the solutions such as a network, a mobile system, or a better service to improve the situation. The goal in this application will be saving lives of newborns. In addition, a brief time frame should be included to help the project to be understandable.
The importance of the summary is described by the USAID according to the type you choose for your application. For the Seed Application, reviewers will screen your summary by using the Innovation Screen Criteria to decide if your application will be able to pass this screening and go to next evaluation step. And thus it is critical to make it clear that how innovative your application is in the summary paragraph. The Innovation Screen Criteria are as follows.
- The solution offers a creative approach to the problem and is clearly differentiated from existing approaches;
- Address a key roadblock or critical condition;
- Apply to hard-to-reach, low-resource settings in low- and middle-income countries;
- Have the potential to substantially reduce stillborn, maternal and/or newborn deaths;
- Provide a clear and compelling description of the potential scale at which the innovation could be applied.
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