Deadline: 27-Sep-20
The Dutch Relief Alliance Innovation Fund (DIF) proudly presents its third Call for Proposals. The DIF 3 Local Call aims to promote humanitarian innovation as locally as possible.
The Call process itself and the granted projects are expected to demonstrate opportunities and barriers to local humanitarian innovation, provide best practice/ learnings on how the sector, and actors such as the DRA, can overcome these barriers, and support local innovations that potentially lead to promising solutions to locally defined problems.
Funding Information
- The total amount available for this call is 2 million Euros total for the implementation of innovative projects in the refugee response in 2021.
Thematic Focus
The Dutch Relief Alliance has seven innovation themes, two have been selected for this call:
- Safety & Protection
- SAFETY: The condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury. This covers both staff and beneficiary safety.
- PROTECTION: The effort to protect the fundamental well-being (mentally and physically) of individuals caught up in conflicts or “man-made” emergencies. This covers responses to SGBV.
- Renewable Energy: Globally, one of the greatest challenges facing refugees is the lack of quality, reliable, affordable, and clean energy sources – for both electricity and cooking. In addition to refugees having limited financial means, problems on the supply side include private sector enterprises not being familiar with demonstrated refugees’ willingness and readiness to pay for quality energy products, lack of selling points accessible to refugees, and customer service capacities. Barriers to uptake on the user side include a lack of appropriate information and incentives. Additionally, humanitarian programs heavily rely on fossil fuels (fuel for transport, generators) that contribute to, rather than mitigate, CO2 emissions.
Eligibility Criteria
- The DIF 3 Local Call supports projects that are ready for the pilot and/or scale phase of their innovation journey. This means this Call for Proposals will not support projects that are in their recognition, invention or adaptation phase. All projects are required to work in partnerships that can consist of other humanitarian organizations, including INGOs, the private sector, social enterprises, universities, knowledge institutions, civil society organizations (CSOs), community-based organizations (CBOs), local partners, and/or (local) governments.
- To be eligible, applicants must ensure that partnerships must include local actors and their innovations must demonstrate proof of concept ready for piloting or scaling.
- Applicants must:
- Clearly demonstrate how the proposed project meets the selected thematic focus area and the chosen challenge statement;
- Have the necessary rights/permissions required to operate in the selected implementation area as relevant (i.e. refugee settlements);
- One of the implementing partners should have a presence in the project implementation areas;
- Be able to provide a copy of a registration certificate providing legal right to operate in Uganda;
- The lead applicant should demonstrate the capacity to provide technical support and work towards building the capacity of the local partner;
- Be able to provide an MoU between partners if pre-existing, a Teaming Agreement or a Letter of Intent;
- Demonstrate proof of concept: be able to demonstrate that the innovation has been under development and iteration since a minimum of a year, provide written evidence of the research and tests conducted, and provide evidence of a prototype or minimum viable product (photos, designs);
- Demonstrate previous experience in implementing similar projects in the selected thematic areas;
- Demonstrate participation or inclusion of feedback (for example earlier assessments) of stakeholder and project beneficiaries in the design of the proposed innovation.
- Be in satisfactory financial health, have adequate financial systems and human resource capacity to implement the project;
- Communicate regularly with RIL Uganda and the DIF during the implementation period and submit regular narrative and financial reports (frequency tbd);
- Be able to fully abide by the contracting terms (tbd);
- Be able to carry out an audit, in line with the DRA audit protocol.
For more information, visit https://dutchrelief.org/innovation/