Homegrown ideas, global solutions

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This article was published 20/08/2019 (2385 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Manitoba international development organization is quarterbacking a new $16.5-million national innovation initiative funded by Global Affairs Canada to test innovative solutions to alleviate poverty and advance gender equality in the Global South.

The recently launched initiative, which is being run by the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation (MCIC), will provide funding of up to $250,000 exclusively to small and medium-sized organizations (SMOs). Larger organizations are typically far more successful accessing funding from Global Affairs Canada for traditional international development work.

Janice Hamilton, the executive director of MCIC, part of a national network of similar provincial councils, said the issue of access to funding for SMOs has been discussed for some time and the councils were invited to submit a proposal that has resulted in the $16.5-million Fund for Innovation and Transformation (FIT).

It is part of a $100-million initiative Global Affairs Canada announced in May, dedicated to SMOs that provide assistance to less-developed countries, consistent with Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy.

The FIT funding will go to SMOs across the country that have come up with innovative solutions that are at the proof-of-concept phase to advance gender equality in the Global South.

Hamilton said MCIC and the Inter-Council Network (ICN) coalition of eight provincial and regional councils for international co-operation were happy to include the focus on development for women.

“Many organizations are already working on those issues,” she said. “There is a good reason for that. If you improve the lives of women and girls, you improve communities and families and the quality of life goes up.”

FIT has received 70 five-page concept submissions so far, from which a certain number will be selected to go through to the proposal phase. Over the course of the five-year program, Hamilton said, the expectation is that 50 to 70 projects would be funded.

Rather than typical development projects that include construction of buildings, the FIT initiative is looking for new approaches to address long-standing issues or solutions to new problems.

As an example of the kind of novel projects MCIC is looking for, Hamilton cites Make Music Matter, a Manitoba organization that has designed music therapy to help women in places like Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo who have been subjected to atrocities in the conflicts that have beset that part of Africa.

One of the criteria for submission is that the SMOs must have a partner in the target country.

“Even more specifically, we like them to be working with women’s organizations or women’s rights organizations,” Hamilton said.

Also required are methods for testing and sharing project results.

“This is potentially an opportunity to be a safe place to fail,” Hamilton said. “Often with development funding, you have to show good results. But we can all learn from something that does not work. We need to be comfortable sharing that to someone else going down the path.”

In taking on the FIT program, MCIC has doubled in size, bringing on nine new staff with a range of expertise. It was selected to manage the program because of its experience in managing provincial funds for its member organizations, which it has done since 1974.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca