Dutch Relief Alliance Innovation Fund - third call for proposals (2020)

The Dutch Relief Alliance Innovation Fund (DIF) proudly presents its 3rd Call for Proposals. The DIF 3 Local Call aims to promote humanitarian innovation locally. 

Based on lessons learned from past Calls, the focus focused on local humanitarian innovations in Uganda. The total amount available for this call was 2 million Euros total for implementation of innovative projects in the refugee response in 2021.

The DIF 3 Local Call process and the grant projects are expected to demonstrate opportunities and barriers to local humanitarian innovation, provide best practice and learning on how the sector and actors, can overcome these barriers, and support local innovations that potentially lead to promising solutions to locally defined problems.

The Call, facilitated by RIL Uganda was an opportunity for new types of partnerships to emerge around locally-driven innovations responding to Energy challenges and to Safety & Protection challenges. See more below on winning projects, shortlisted projects and background on the call process.

Thematic focus & challenge statements

The Dutch Relief Alliance has seven innovation themes, two have been selected for this call and 4 challenge-statements have been developed collaboratively:

• Energy

  Challenge 1- How might we improve accessibility (distance) for refugees (in particular women) to be able to purchase quality and affordable clean energy solutions and/or obtain aftersales/maintenance?

  Challenge 2- How might settlement-level businesses, institutions and humanitarian stakeholders be supported in a transition to clean energy so as to serve community needs better and preserve the environment?

• Safety & Protection

  Challenge 1- How might we improve the relationship between refugees and host community youths so that we enhance the social cohesion in refugee settlements?

  Challenge 2- How might we facilitate communities & strengthen community systems to design and implement improvements in access to and quality of PSS services for refugees?

Meet the Winners

Information About The DIF Call

The Timeline

Call Details & Application Process

• You can read all the details about the call here - see the Executive Summary & the Full Text of the call.

• Co-creation events, Q&A and Matchmaking sessions took place in September-early October. See resources here.

• Submission of Expressions of Interest are closed. Shortlisted candidates have been invited by email to submit a full proposal between 2 and 15 November.

• For any questions, contact: uganda@responseinnovationlab.com

Full proposal submission (deadline past)

• Applicants shortlisted by the External Review Panel have been notified and have until 15 November (midnight) to submit their full proposal.

• All applications need to be submitted via the online Google form below.

• We suggest, preparing the application offline before submitting to save your work, and have a thorough review prior to sending in a final copy. You are able to download an offline template of the questions and the annexes.

• Attach Supporting Documents. The narrative questions will be answered via Google form and you will be asked to attach:

  • Logframe (Annex B), implementation plan (Annex E) and other M&E tools (annex C and D) as per template here - mandatory

  • Detailed budget as one of the tabs also included in the same template (Annex F) - mandatory

  • Signed MoU or letter stating intent of partners to collaborate on this project - mandatory

  • One single supporting document in which you should include all the graphs and pictures you deem relevant to the innovation proposal - optional

• Support available to applicants during the full-proposal development stage:

  • The Chairperson of the External Review Panel has shared with you the feedback on your EoI and can be contacted for clarifications until 11 November.

  • If you are applying under Stream 2, the RIL team can provide some business development support to help you strengthen your proposal. Particularly we can support you in making sure you are filling out the Annexes as per expectations. This support is proposed for Stream 2 applicants as it is expected that Stream 1 applicants are familiar with the type of annex tools provides. Contact uganda@responseinnovationlab.com until 11 November.

  • For any other questions under each stream, please also reach out to uganda@responseinnovationlab.com. Please note, questions will be answered until Friday 13 November 5pm Uganda time. We cannot guarantee answers to questions received after that time.

OTHER Reference Documents

DRA Partners in Uganda

With the support of

Contact

For any questions, contact: uganda@responseinnovationlab.com

Your main focal points:

Lisette Gotink, Portfolio Manager, Dutch Relief Alliance Innovation Fund, based in the Netherlands

Charlene Cabot, Response Innovation Lab Manager, based in Kampala