Catalog

Does Your Idea Have Potential?
ADB Review [ December 2006 - January 2007 ]

Grants from ADB's Pilot and Demonstration Activities (PDA) fund to test innovative water projects on a small scale are available to nongovernment organizations (NGOs), local governments and ADB staff. Here are answers to frequently asked questions about the fund.

Which ideas qualify?

Proposed projects should:

• Focus on freshwater resources and/or freshwater services.
• Be able to be implemented within 12 months or less.
• Involve a maximum request for US$50,000 financial assistance.
• Not duplicate ongoing or pipelined activity in the developing member country (DMC).
• Be directly relevant to the "sector outcomes" cited in ADB's Country Strategy and Program for the country concerned.

Which ideas would not qualify?

• Projects wholly comprising workshops and conferences or training/course materials development
• Projects wholly focused on capacity building
• Activities that would typically be included in an ADB technical assistance or loan-funded project

What kind of assistance would successful ideas get?

Successful proposals will be allotted up to a maximum of $50,000 funding assistance. These funds can be used for, among others, consultant services in developing, validating and demonstrating new approaches, and field-based applied research and demonstration by local stakeholders, including NGOs.

How are proposals considered?

The program has 10 criteria of equal weight:

• Innovation—new to the particular situation/market
• Replicability: Actual—with strong demonstration" element; includes advocacy and dissemination
• Replicability: Potential—tests original approaches, but with little work on bringing-to-scale
• Lesson learned—generates distinct and relevant "lessons learned"
• Pro-poor—directly benefits the poor
• Participatory and gender-sensitive—engages immediate stakeholders, especially the poor and vulnerable
• ADB operations support—directly supports ADB operations in DMCs
• Technically strong—internally logical, has a realistic timeline and budget, implementers are aptly experienced and skilled, roles and responsibilities are clear, there are indicators against which to assess quality, and has a public dissemination plan
• Consistent with ADB's Water for All Policy
• Contributes to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals

Who can apply?

• NGOs, community associations, or other development partners in an ADB DMC
• A professional staff member of an ADB regional department (In the case of non-ADB proposals, a PDA activity officer from ADB staff will be assigned to oversee the project.)

How should proposals be submitted?

• Proposals should use the standard "Request for Support Form" and include details on how the proposal would address the PDA ranking criteria. Download forms [ PDF: 15kb | 2 pages ].
• E-mail proposals to the PDA coordinator who will pool all received proposals on a monthly basis for evaluation.

Who will evaluate the proposals?

ADB's Water Committee reviews and ranks proposals as follows:

• "High" can be funded immediately.
• "Medium or Low" will be on hold pending availability of funds and/or improvement of the proposal.
• "Not qualified"

What are the next steps upon submission of the proposal?

• Proponents will be informed in writing of the evaluation results and ranking.
• For approved proposals, the proponents will develop the detailed terms of reference and implementation plan for the PDA. They will work with the PDA coordinator regarding administrative arrangements.
• For the implementation of each PDA, national and international NGOs, academic/research institutions and, where needed, domestic and/or international short-term individual consultants will be engaged to help the PDA activity officer implement PDAs in DMCs.
• Engagement of implementing parties will take place after the Water Committee has approved the PDA proposal, and a DMC focal agency has given concurrence for implementing the PDA in the host country.
• After DMC concurrence has been obtained, ADB will enter into a letter of agreement (LOA) with the implementing agency for the implementation of the PDA.
• Implementing parties can begin operations upon receipt of all required documents. The funds will be released based on the implementing party's billing.

Learn more about ADB's Pilot and Demonstration Activities

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