The Innovation Fund supported smaller pilot projects that tested novel approaches to tackling extreme poverty, tailoring interventions towards specific issues arising from geography, age, gender, ethnicity, and other factors that drive extreme poverty. The Innovation Fund ran from September 2009 until January 2015, funding 23 NGOs with innovative ideas for poverty alleviation in their respective areas of expertise.
NGOs were selected for funding using a competitive process driven by an Independent Assessment Panel (IAP), through four separate Rounds of Calls for Proposals, as follows:
– Round 1, focused specifically on eradicating extreme poverty in areas identified as “extreme poverty hotspots”: the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Haor and Coastal regions of Bangladesh
– Round 2 tackled the root causes of seasonal income, food and employment insecurity (‘Monga’) in northwest Bangladesh
– Round 3 worked with marginalised groups who have traditionally been excluded from state and non-state development programmes, including elderly people, the physically challenged, religious or ethnic minorities
– Round 4, focused on achieving sustainable impact for extremely poor people, particularly the most vulnerable and socially excluded groups (women, the elderly, indigenous groups, and the disabled).
If you wish to read the Innovation Fund Synthesis Report, please download Let the Hundred Flowers Bloom? An Assessment of Innovative Pro-Poorest Interventions Supported by Shiree by Binayak Sen and Mainul Haque