Deadline: March 31, 2014
Interested applicants are invited to submit their initiative for the FIRE program award.
The Fund for Internet Research and Education (FIRE programme) is a grants and awards program designed to encourage and support the development of solutions to information and communication needs in the African Region, emphasizing the role of the Internet in the social and economical development for the benefit of the African community. The FIRE programme is a proud member of the Seed Alliance, helping ideas to grow.
The awards will be granted to initiatives that are on the last stages of implementation or that have finalized activities already that are aligned with the funding categories and eligibility criteria.
Benefits:
- Awards will be up to USD 3,000.
The funding categories for 2014 are:
- Innovation on access provision:
- ICT access is a prevalent issue in the African region, especially for services that require broadband connectivity. Innovative solutions offering low cost deployment, low power consumption and low maintenance that expanded fixed and mobile access to the internet through new forms of technical and organizational arrangements as well as improved the quality of access based on issues of accessibility, disability and linguistic diversity.
- E-Development:
- The development, deployment and enhancement of content, applications and solutions to support timely and relevant information dissemination on a large scale using a range of network infrastructures through a variety of devices.
- Freedom of expression:
- Initiatives related to freedom of expression, freedom of association, privacy, security, consumer’s rights, new forms of intellectual property in the digital environment, and a wider range of issues related to Internet and human rights.
Eligibility:
- Have a good knowledge of technology and the internet
- Be passionate about Africa development.
Criteria:
- The proposal must clearly define the problem that originated the project, its relevance for the community involved and how the project implementation will solve it.
- Include relevant background information relating to the activities proposed.
- Clearly define the general and specific objective of the project and how they relate to the main diagnosed problem.
- Describe the groups that will be the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the outcomes achieved by the project.
- Describe the actions to be carried out as well as the methodologies chosen, stating the reason for this choice and compare with other possible alternatives.
- Describe clearly and chronologically the activities relevant to each objective, stating anticipated start-dates and end-dates and the important assumptions.
- Describe the concrete outcomes that will be generated during the complete project cycle.
- Provide at least one verifiable indicator for each expected outcome.
- Clearly state the important assumptions on which the success of the project depends and the risks that have been considered.
- Provide all the information requested about the organization responsible for the project implementation, which will be legally responsible for the management of the project and the funds granted by the FIRE programme.
- The names, academic background and relevant experience of the persons having relevant participation in the execution of the project must be stated (particularly of the person who will be technically and administratively in charge of executing the proposal).
In addition to selecting a winner per category, there shall be a Community Choice Award category for the best social media campaign (the project with the highest number of votes from the community).
For more information, click here.
