Applications Open for 2nd Round of Australia Awards-Africa Alumni Small Grants Scheme 2018!

Deadline: 29 September 2017

Applications are open for Australia Awards – Africa Alumni Small Grants Scheme (Round 2 – 2018) to provide funding to Alumni Associations to deliver Continued Professional Development (CPD) projects for their members and for development projects of Alumni groups or COPs.

Priority Sectors

Priority sectors for grant funding are those identified under Australia Awards – Africa namely within the areas of Agricultural Productivity, Extractives and Public Policy.
All applications are assessed on their merits.

Funding Information

Grants will be awarded between AUD 5,000 and AUD 10,000 per grantee group/ Association; however, DFAT reserves the right to approve funding above these amounts for proposals that have exceptional merit such as bigger collaborative ventures.

Funding Categories

Round 2 – 2018 will provide funding to Alumni groups under the following two categories:

Development Projects of Alumni groups / Alumni Communities of Practice
- Under this category, the Grant Scheme provides funding to assist groups of members or communities of practice to carry out activities that have a clear intended development benefit linked to the development objectives of their home country or region. The Small Grants will not be awarded to individual Alumni.
Continued Professional Development (CPD) activities of Alumni Associations
- Alumni Associations may also apply for the Small Grants to offer Continued Professional Development (CPD) activities for their members in collaboration and agreement with Australia Awards and the relevant Post. The Grant Scheme provides funding to enable Alumni Associations to carry out once-off professional development activities which is to the benefit of the Alumni Association members and are shared with all Alumni who are interested. These training programs should be in cohesion with those of Australia Awards – Africa’s Alumni Engagement Strategy and agreed within the Alumni governance committee of an Alumni Association.

Eligibility Criteria

Eligible Alumni Associations are those which:
- are aligned with Australia Awards – Africa and its Alumni Engagement Strategy (AES) as per the definition of registered and operating Alumni Associations;
- commit to the development and implementation of sound policies and practices focused on the development objectives in their country as per the advice of the relevant DFAT Post;
- commit to networking amongst Alumni and across public sector, private sector and civil society for development benefit; and
- commit to strengthening relationships and enduring links between African and Australian associations, companies and organisations.
Eligible Alumni are those who have studied under a scholarship funded by the Australian Government under an Australia Award, an Australian Development Scholarship or previous similar programs for a Bachelor, Masters or Doctoral degree or an Australia Awards – Africa Short Course.
Alumni applying for a grant must be registered on the alumni database at the time of applying and must be members of an African Alumni Association in the case of CPD applications.
Applicants from Alumni groups with development projects must provide an implementation lead and sub-lead and must provide and independent bank account in the name of the project with the afore-mentioned leads as signatories of the account. No grants will be paid into bank accounts in the name of any person. In the case of Associations, the bank account must be in the name of the Association with two signatories.
Grants may be paid out in more than one tranche as per the decision of Palladium.
Alumni Associations who apply for the Grants as CPD funding needs to provide minutes of meeting where the agreement of the application reached and approved.
As per the Investment Design Document (Version RFT 23 July 2015) small grants will not be available to self-funded graduate Alumni members.