CC Pranav

Recently, someone pointed out to us that from our website, it seems like we're working on only one project at the moment. Fortunately, we have more to work on than that! Time to let you in on some of the statistics of our work. 

Since opening our programme up for proposals (about a year ago), we have received 150 'teasers' - short concept notes in which people explain their idea. More than 50 of those were received for our Innovation Challenge, which was great but also means we have been working long hours to review all of them at once... We review every proposal seriously, and let you know why you might not fit in with the programme, or which points in your proposal need some tweaking.
64 of the 150 teasers unfortunately were not eligible, the rest is somewhere 'in the pipeline', which means they might have been asked to adjust their idea, they might be writing their full proposal, or they are in the last phase, awaiting approval by our external experts. Our target for 2015 is to have signed 10 contracts, and we are well underway towards meeting that objective. In fact, we have more than 20 project applicants writing their full proposals at the moment, after having their initial teaser reviewed and approved. For three applications we are in the final stage of approval. In three years, we hope to have around 100 projects in our portfolio.

Of the 150 teasers, an overwhelming amount of 71% comes from African applicants. Most of them submitted with partners, from Africa as well or from the Netherlands or elsewhere. The majority of the participants work at an NGO, consultancy NGO or consultancy company.
Most projects are to take place in Ghana and Kenya, where the enthusiasm for our programme is high. However, most of our other focus countries are close to meeting our targets: looking at our budget for three years and dividing it evenly over our countries, for each country we should have received at least 7 proposals by now. At the moment, only Mali and South Sudan are (just) falling short of that. And, this lagging behind can be explained by the fact that we have only just introduced the programme in Mali by travelling there, and South Sudan has not yet been on our travel agenda due to security reasons.

In terms of the pressing needs the proposals are addressing, we see that Water and Sanitation are most popular (and perhaps most pressing?). However, again dividing our budget over the 12 pressing needs and 3 years, each pressing need should have at least 7 proposals. Only pressing need Financial Arrangements is not meeting this threshold right now with 'only' 6 proposals received.

This first VIA Water year for us has been focused on generating proposals, trying to get ideas from the focus countries themselves, and also learning about what kind of proposals have been submitted. And although numbers are important, quality matters much more to us than quantity does. Looking ahead, our focus will be more on finding the true innovative gems, whilst still striving to maintain high quality. We're proud of the proposals we have already generated, and are looking forward to seeing what will come our way in the coming year.

Do you have an idea you want to share with us? Let us know!