Deadline: 11-Apr-21
The Innovation for Change (I4C) Africa Hub initiative has been launched that aims to encourage the engagement and participation of people and organizations to work together across the region to come up with innovative ways to solve a particular challenge so as to bring about social change.
The seek promising ideas in the form of research, activities on the ground, new technology, an app, or a training tool that can affect change within the three (3) thematic areas. These could be related to technology, policy, research, or advocacy.
They could also act as an incentive for meeting a specific challenge, rather than being a reward for past achievements, and should have the potential to produce long-term change and deepen social impact on the African continent. Proposed projects can be focused on one African country or multiple countries across the continent.
Benefits
- Eight (8) best innovative initiatives across the continent’s sub-regions (Central, East, North, Southern & West Africa) will be supported with a grant of up to USD $10,000 each for research and design support to help scale-up their initiatives.
- In addition to the monetary award, following implementation, the Winners will receive support and mentorship for a year from the I4C Global network, to identify and collect evidence and best practices at the sub-regional level, on innovative initiatives via a Learning and Evaluation Lab for the grantees to build their capacity based off of the Communities of Practice (CoP) sessions held by the I4C Helper Hub/HH Development Evaluation team.
- The L & E Lab will be a platform for the Winners to assess project outcomes, impacts and capture learnings and best practices. As a part of the Lab, the innovators will prototype their strategies and test them out with some of the members of the I4C Africa Hub; creating multi-media exhibitions of their projects which will showcase their innovations, outcomes and impacts.
Eligibility Criteria
- Applicants can be an individual or a team as large as five (5) people.
- Applications for the We-Account SIC 2020/2021 initiative are open to all types of organizations based in Africa. The I4C Africa Hub encourages youth and women’s organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), grassroots movements, community or people’s organizations, and social enterprises.
- If applicants are not a registered organization in their country, the Initiative encourages applicants to partner with a registered organization.
Criteria
- Audience Expansion – the social impact on the number of countries or the number of people served by this particular service/product once the pilot has been tested and shown to be successful. A good example is SEMA in Uganda; SEMA created a system to give citizens a voice, while gathering data for improving public institutions and reducing corruption.
- Association – the expansion of the project/size/coverage through collective efforts that are coalition-based and network-based and focus on the main themes of accountability, transparency and natural resources management.
- Technology Enhancer – the product/service is accompanied by the development of a feature or a technological function, such as adding a social media analysis tool, to an advocacy app to enhance its use.
For more information, visit https://weaccount.org/guidelines/