THE SASAKAWA PEACE FOUNDATION

Pilot Study on Setting up an Innovative Scheme for Supporting Local NGOs

6,900,000 yen[Grant Project]
The Association of Foundations (Philippines)

Compared to their urban counterparts, local NGOs play distinctive roles in poverty reduction and social development because of their accumulated knowledge of local areas, support base for field work, and cost-effective activities. However, their financial situations are fragile and the present NGO supporting schemes are not appropriate or effective for them. This project aims to develop and try out to verify their effectiveness local NGO support systems in 3 Asian countries that provide small monetary grants for activities such as participating in seminars, inviting speakers, and finding projects, which hitherto have been out of the scope of usual grants from donor organizations. The evaluation results and ways to utilize the systems will be made available to the public so that the systems can be applied to other countries.
The following activities are planned in this year in the Philippines as the target of the primary pilot test.

Announcement of Support Scheme Proposals (April, in Manila, Visaya, and Mindanao)
A proposed framework will be announced to targeted recipients of support scheme including local NGOs as well as networking organizations and donor groups.
Support Scheme Trial and Modification (2007)
Based on the NGO Strengthening Assistance Mechanism developed in the first year, a series of steps including project screening will be implemented three times in July, October, and January. Under the support scheme, 25,000 yen to 250,000 yen per project, about 35 projects in maximum per annum, are scheduled to be disbursed in small monetary grants to cover cost of activities that are expected to contribute to nurturing human resources and/or organizational capacity building of local NGOs.
Preparation for the Secondary Pilot Test
In preparation for a second round of pilot testing in other countries in the third year, target countries (approximately 2 from Asia) and partners will be selected, and the implementation structure will be built.

(Second year of a 3-year project)