Meaningful Participation Challenge

Increasing the meaningful participation of people with disabilities and older people in humanitarian action

Contents

Acknowledgements 2

About Elrha and the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) 4

Background 4

The Problem 6

The Challenge 8

Funding available 9

Eligibility criteria 9

Assessment criteria 10

Expected activities and deliverables 14

Challenge timeline 15

Application and evaluation process 17

Glossary 18

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all those who contributed to the development of this Innovation Challenge, including the following members of our Technical Working Group on the inclusion of people with disabilities and older people, our Gap Analysis Steering Committee, our Challenge reference group:

Dr Alex Robinson (Nossal Institute for Public Health)

Dr Amita Bhaktar (Independent WASH Consultant)

Andrew Kavala (MANEPO)

Diana Hiscock (HelpAge)

Thomas Palmer (Islamic Relief Worldwide)

Raissa Azzalini (Oxfam)

Raya Al Jadir (Journalist and Activist)

Rose Achayo Obol (NUWODU)

Simon Okwii Peter (Disability advocate and lawyer)

Sulayman A. Ujah (Disability Community Federal Capital Territory)

Waqar Puri (STEP)

Additional thanks for comments from:

Hector Payo Meiriño (Accountable Now)

Christian Modino Hok (CBM Global)

Thank you also to our Challenge support partner, Science Practice.

About Elrha and the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF)

We are Elrha. A global organisation that finds solutions to complex humanitarian problems through research and innovation. Our Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) aims to improve outcomes for people affected by humanitarian crises by identifying, nurturing and sharing more effective and scalable solutions.

Our area of focus on the inclusion of people with disabilities and older people explores the barriers to, and supports opportunities for, the inclusion of older people and people with disabilities in humanitarian action. We believe that humanitarian innovation has much to contribute to this agenda and to generating more effective and inclusive humanitarian action.

We strive to ensure that our work is problem-led and evidence-based. Following two rapid reviews of inclusion in WASH interventions and GBV programming, we funded two Challenges in 2019 to explore the barriers identified (the projects are ongoing). We also commissioned a Gap Analysis on the inclusion of people with disabilities and older people in humanitarian action. The first part of this Gap Analysis presents the findings of a systematic academic literature review and grey literature review. The second part will provide additional findings from consultations, interviews and case studies and will be published towards the end of summer 2020.

Background

This Challenge aims to support innovative mechanisms that enable people with disabilities and older people to participate fully and effectively in decision-making and in the processes for designing, developing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating mainstream humanitarian programmes, policies and interventions, as relevant. The Challenge will also support the development of innovative means of assessing the effectiveness of the proposed mechanisms for participation.

To decide the focus of this Challenge, we consulted with the research team leading the Gap Analysis, as well as our Technical Working Group. From these consultations, meaningful participation emerged as a significant gap in improving inclusion in the humanitarian sector. The main issues identified were a lack of mechanisms to increase the meaningful participation of older people and people with disabilities in humanitarian action and a lack of approaches to assess the effectiveness of these mechanisms.

To refine the focus of the Challenge, we held further consultations with Technical Working Group members and with a reference group that included people with disabilities and people with humanitarian experience. This allowed us to develop our thinking around what we mean by meaningful participation and what we want to achieve through this Challenge.

Participation should be an individual choice and not limited by barriers such as cultural, identity, attitudinal, physical, communication or legal/policy barriers. The overall aim of this Challenge is to support innovation to increase the meaningful participation of older people and people with disabilities across the humanitarian sector.

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This Handbook provides information about the Challenge on Increasing Meaningful Participation and the types of projects we are looking to fund.

To apply for the Challenge, please complete and submit an Expression of Interest (EoI) via our Common Grant Application platform.

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The Problem

The humanitarian sector has long acknowledged that the participation of people affected by crises in all stages of humanitarian programming can improve accountability and the quality of humanitarian assistance, as well as strengthen the resilience and capacity of those affected.¹ Despite numerous policies and guidance² that echo the need for participation, there has been slow progress in mainstreaming such practices in humanitarian settings. Where participation does take place it often builds on pre-existing structures and representatives which may exclude the most marginalised and vulnerable, such as older people and people with disabilities.

In recent years there has been a renewed effort in moving beyond the rhetoric of participation and embedding it into humanitarian practice; examples of this are the “Participation Revolution” workstream part of the Grand Bargain and the participation commitment within the Core Humanitarian Standards. Similarly, the Humanitarian Inclusion Standards for People with Disabilities and Older People explicitly sets out standards for promoting the meaningful participation of older people and people with disabilities in decision-making. Yet examples of mechanisms that enable the meaningful participation of older people and people with disabilities in humanitarian programming, as well as evidence around their effectiveness, remain rare in the sector.³

Although available data on disability is not comprehensive, global estimates suggest that around 15% of people in a given population will have some kind of disability. This may be substantially higher in humanitarian settings.⁴ For example, over a fifth of refugees in Lebanon and Jordan have a disability.⁵ Older age intersects significantly with disability as an estimated 46% of those over 60 have a disability.⁶ Despite representing significant proportions of a given population, people with disabilities and older people are often excluded from decision-making in humanitarian programming.⁷ As a result, the rights, perspectives and agency of older people and people with disabilities are frequently overlooked, leaving them to be disproportionately affected by crises.

One reason for their exclusion is that there are limited mechanisms that translate standards into practice, and enable the meaningful participation of people with disabilities and older people in humanitarian decision-making and programming. Although there are some resources available on inclusive practices, including a HelpAge toolkit on Age-inclusive disaster risk reduction and CBM practical guidance on inclusive humanitarian fieldwork, these are limited in number and there is limited evidence of the uptake or the effectiveness of mechanisms for participation. MIT D-Lab has developed a number of participatory design tools for humanitarian innovation⁸, but this is not designed for wider humanitarian programming and there is no explicit focus on inclusion for people with disabilities and older people.

The lack of inclusive mechanisms for participation means that people with disabilities and older people often face a range of barriers to participating in decision-making for programmes and activities that directly affect them. These can include environmental, attitudinal, and institutional barriers.⁹ There can also be a lack of humanitarian practitioners with the skills or capacity to make participation meaningful.¹⁰ When this combines with the lack of inclusive mechanisms, participation can become tokenistic or ineffective.

Another key issue in humanitarian action is the limited inclusion of representative organisations such as organisations for people with disabilities (OPDs) and older people’s organisations (OPAs) in decision-making. Globally, there is an increasing recognition of the role that representative organisations can play in humanitarian action¹¹, which is an important step towards raising awareness of the rights and experiences of older people and people with disabilities. However, these organisations are still rarely involved as active partners or leaders in humanitarian programming, despite having much expertise to share.

Finally, to enable the sustainable mainstreaming of any inclusive mechanisms for participation, they will need to be backed up by evidence of their effectiveness. However, there are currently few approaches, metrics and tools on how to assess the effectiveness of such participation mechanisms. Our Gap Analysis found that there is a lack of documented evidence on the impacts and outcomes of increased participation of people with disabilities and older people in decision making. It also found a need for more understanding on the effectiveness of OPDs in enabling meaningful participation.¹²

It is important that older people and people with disabilities define what an ‘effective’ mechanism for participation looks like. This, in itself, requires participation and might mean that standardised, quantitative metrics for effectiveness are not appropriate. Whilst there are some metrics and indicators available as part of existing toolkits¹³, these have yet to be mainstreamed or assessed for their quality or usability.¹⁴ This lack of monitoring and assessment limits accountability between humanitarian responders and communities affected by crises. Therefore, approaches for assessing the effectiveness of mechanisms for meaningful participation of people with disabilities and older people are a key element in ensuring meaningful participation becomes standard practice across humanitarian programming.

ALNAP (2003) “Participation by Crisis-Affected Populations in Humanitarian Action: A Handbook for Practitioners” p. 7

ALNAP (2009) “Participation handbook for humanitarian field workers”

Robinson. A, Manjula. M, Logam. L (2020) “Gap Analysis: the Inclusion of People with Disability and Older People in Humanitarian Response”. Elrha

WHO (2011) “World report on disability”

Humanity and Inclusion (2018) “⅕ Syrian Refugees has disability”

ADCAP (2018) “Humanitarian inclusion standards for older people and people with disabilities” p. 20

World Humanitarian Summit (2016) “Inclusion of persons with disabilities into humanitarian action”

MIT D-Lab (forthcoming) “Participatory innovation toolkit”

ADCAP (2018) “Humanitarian Inclusion Standards for Older People and People with Disabilities” p. 29

Holden et al. (2019) “Disability Inclusion Helpdesk Report No. 9” p. 6

Humanity and Inclusion, CBM and the International Disability Alliance (2019) “Inclusion of people with disabilities in humanitarian action”

Logam. L, Manjula. M, Robinson. A (2020) “Gap Analysis: the Inclusion of People with Disability and Older People in Humanitarian Response”. Elrha.

See Tool #B1 and #B6 part of Global Protection Cluster (2017) “Protection Mainstreaming Toolkit”.

Holden et al. (2019) “Disability Inclusion Helpdesk Report No. 9” p. 9

The Challenge

We are looking for innovative mechanisms to increase the meaningful participation of people with disabilities and older people in humanitarian action, and innovative ways of assessing the effectiveness of these mechanisms.

By ‘meaningful participation’, we mean that...

People with disabilities and older people are able to participate fully and effectively in decision-making and in the processes for designing, developing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating humanitarian programmes, policies and interventions, as relevant. It should result in participation being an individual choice not limited by barriers including cultural, identity, attitudinal, physical, communication or legal/policy barriers.

This Challenge aims to fund innovative projects that:

Address both elements of the Challenge, ie. propose an innovative mechanism for meaningful participation and an innovative method of assessing its effectiveness. We are open to any types of mechanisms, but expect to see innovative mechanisms that involve community-led participation toolkits for staff, novel approaches to accessible communication and facilitation, and methods that also address the enablers of participation, such as awareness of rights and self-empowerment.

Have strong, meaningful partnerships between representative organisations (OPDs and OPAs) and humanitarian actors. The involvement of OPDs and OPAs is key to enabling inclusion and they often have valuable expertise for the humanitarian community.

Are implemented as part of any type of programme or cluster area in a specific humanitarian setting.This includes, but is not limited to: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Gender-Based Violence (GBV), Shelter, Food security, Health or Education programming, as well as in cross-cutting programmes such as feedback mechanisms.

Are committed and open to sharing ongoing progress and lessons learned with a cohort of grantees and peers.

Funding available

We have a total budget of 900,000 GBP available for this Challenge.

From this, we envisage funding a selection of projects with varying budgets, generally between 150,000 and 300,000 GBP. Please consider the range provided as suggestive and align proposed budgets and timelines with your project’s ambition.

Each project is expected to last between 15 and 20 months. All project-related activities must complete by 30 September 2022. Please see the Challenge timeline section for further details.

The total duration of projects should cover all activities including the implementation/piloting of the proposed participation mechanism, assessing its effectiveness, and the sharing of lessons learned with other innovators selected for this Challenge, as well as with the broader humanitarian sector. We are unable to offer any project extensions, so applicants should be conservative in their planning and leave space to allow for flexibility should changes or delays occur, where possible.

Please note that the funding amount requested at EoI stage can be indicative. Detailed budget plans will be requested at the Full Proposal stage. Please see the Application and evaluation process section in this handbook for details on the two assessment stages.

Eligibility criteria

To be eligible to apply for the Challenge, your application must meet the following requirements:

The lead applicant organisation must be a legally registered entity (ie, civil society organisation – including representative organisations, international non-governmental organisation, national non-governmental organisation, academic/research institution, government, private company, Red Cross/Red Crescent movement, United Nations agency or programme). Applicants are expected to provide relevant evidence (eg, registration document) at the EoI stage.

Your application must propose both an innovative mechanism for enabling people with disabilities and older people to meaningfully participate in humanitarian decision-making, and an innovative method for assessing the effectiveness of their proposed mechanism for participation. Both innovations can be at the Invention (entirely new) or Adaptation (adapted from a different context or sector) stage of humanitarian innovation.¹⁵

Your application must consist of a partnership with at least one operational humanitarian organisation and at least one OPA or OPD working in the place of implementation (either can be the lead applicant). You are not expected to have confirmed partnerships in place for the EoI stage, but you will be expected to provide evidence to demonstrate partnerships by the Full Proposal stage – such as a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) or similar.¹⁶ See Criterion 6 – Meaningful partnership with representative organisations for further details.

Our portfolio of funded innovations reflects the wider bias in the humanitarian sector where funding is mainly allocated to larger, international organisations, likely to be based in places not usually affected by emergencies. To address this imbalance, we are working to better localise our funding and support, and to increase the number of grants we award to organisations with headquarters in regions affected by crisis. With this in mind, we strongly encourage organisations based in regions affected by crisis to apply and to reach out to us with any questions.

Your project must recognise that disability and older age intersect and focus on increasing the meaningful participation of both older people and people with disabilities. We recognise that older people and people with disabilities are diverse and may experience distinct barriers to inclusion, but are also confident that exploring and innovating to overcome barriers faced by both people with disabilities and by older people can be beneficial in driving more inclusive practice for a diverse range of people across humanitarian action.

The proposed duration of and the requested funding for your project must be within the parameters set out for the Challenge: projects should last between 15 and 20 months. All project activities should complete by 30 September 2022 (no extensions permitted). Budgets should be between 150,000 to 300,000 GBP. See the Challenge timeline section for more information.

You are expected to implement your participation mechanism across at least two humanitarian programme stages (eg, design/development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation¹⁷) and clearly explain what the stages are and why these were chosen.

Your proposed mechanism for participation should be implemented in a humanitarian setting as part of an existing humanitarian programme. The mechanism may be part of a ‘Twin-track’ approach¹⁸ and may be implemented in more than one programme.

If your application is successful, you will be expected to take part in four or five HIF-facilitated engagements throughout the grant period to openly share lessons learned with the Challenge cohort. At least one representative from your project must join these sessions.

Please see our Humanitarian Innovation Guide for details about these stages.

We know that good partnerships take time and investment and want you to get off to the best start for this project. While an MoU isn’t legally binding, it can help agree common ground and we encourage you to use one as a foundation to build an equitable partnership from.

The stage names provided here are indicative; we recognise that different organisations may have different names for the stages framing their work.

CBM (2020) “Twin track approach”

Assessment criteria

Eligible applications will be assessed based on the following key criteria:

1. Innovative participation mechanism

Your project should propose new/adapted and improved ways of enabling the meaningful participation of people with disabilities and older people in decision-making for humanitarian action. Your proposed mechanism can be at the Invention (entirely new) or Adaptation (adapted from a different context or sector) stage of humanitarian innovation.¹⁹ We expect proposed mechanisms to build on or complement existing methods from user-centred design approaches or community accountability practices. You will be expected to clearly justify how your proposed mechanism is innovative. You are expected to test your mechanism across as many programme stages as feasible (eg, programme design and inception, implementation, evaluation), at minimum two, and clearly explain what the stages are and why they were chosen.²⁰ Your project should also reflect on the adaptability of the proposed mechanism to other programmes or humanitarian settings.

2. Innovative assessment method

Your project should propose new/adapted and improved ways to assess the effectiveness of your proposed participation mechanism in an innovative and robust manner. The definition and/or metrics used for assessing effectiveness should be defined by older people and people with disabilities. Given the limited availability of metrics and approaches for assessing meaningful participation, we expect projects to propose new or adapted methods, metrics or indicators, or novel data sources. Your proposed assessment method should enable you to test hypotheses about your mechanism and also enable the collection of sufficiently disaggregated data (see ‘hypothesis’ in Glossary). If appropriate, you are encouraged to partner with an academic or research institution to ensure that your proposed assessment method is robust and will generate reliable findings.

3. Good understanding of the problem

Your project will be expected to demonstrate a good understanding of the identified barriers to meaningful participation in your chosen setting and how your proposed mechanism will aim to address these. Your project should demonstrate a robust understanding of the local setting, culture and relationships between and within communities affected by crises, humanitarian agencies, representative organisations, governments and other stakeholders. You are also expected to highlight any gaps in your knowledge of the problem and how you plan to address these. Any assumptions being made about the setting or mechanism should be clearly identified, and used to form hypotheses that can be tested during the project. You will be expected to provide the background to and justification of your chosen humanitarian programme(s) and sector/cluster area(s).

4. Inclusive

Your proposed mechanism and methods to assess effectiveness should be inclusive to enable the meaningful and safe participation of older people and people with disabilities who wish to participate, including enabling the participation of diverse disability constituencies. Where relevant, you should also consider engaging with carers and care-givers.

5. Ethics and risks

Your project must robustly consider the ethical implications of your proposed activities and methods and how to mitigate any risks. Any barriers to the participation of people affected by crises should also be identified, as well as proposed strategies to address them. It must be ensured that the participation of older people and people with disabilities does not lead to any additional, unintended risks or negative consequences. You will be expected to pay ongoing attention to potential ethical issues throughout the duration of your project, not just at the start.

You will be expected to develop an appropriate ethical framework that adequately identifies and responds to the risks associated with your project, including new risks or issues as they arise. For example, frameworks might set out key actions such as gaining initial approval from ethics committees or institutional review boards, setting up advisory groups or developing a cross-organisational ethics policy. Please see our Humanitarian Innovation Guide and Ethics Framework for more information.

6. Meaningful partnership with representative organisations

We encourage applications from OPAs and OPDs as the lead applicant. If the lead applicant is not an OPD or OPA, they are expected to engage in meaningful and productive relationships with OPAs and OPDs. Applicants should detail the foundation for their collaboration and how the OPAs and OPDs will be involved throughout the project.

Your application must include at least one organisation representative of people with disabilities or older people as a partner. If the organisation is not representative of the diversity of the population of persons with disabilities or older people, you will be expected to explain how you will build meaningful and productive relationships with a diverse group of older people and people with disabilities and how you will ethically and safely include them in the project. Where a representative organisation does not exist, you should consider how you might stimulate their formation.

7. Intersectional

While disability and older age are the predominant focus of this Challenge, we recognise that disability and older age also intersect with other identity characteristics, such as gender, race, colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, language, religion, health status, political or other opinion, national or social origin. This intersection can lead to compounding and distinct forms of discrimination and barriers. Your project must recognise and explore these intersections in order to fully understand and address barriers to inclusion.

8. Support staff and organisational capacity building

Your project should build the capacity and knowledge of the representative organisations, humanitarian actors, and other stakeholders you are working with. Your proposed mechanism should be easy for all humanitarian staff and relevant partners to implement. Your project should reflect on any training or materials needed to support relevant staff to effectively implement the proposed mechanisms and assessment method.

9. Committed to sharing learning

You should be committed to sharing ongoing progress and lessons with other Challenge grantees. We would like to create an open and collaborative environment for the selected innovators and will lead four or five facilitated engagements throughout the grant period. You should also develop ambitious dissemination and uptake plans to maximise the impact of their projects and reach diverse audiences. This must include sharing findings and getting feedback from communities affected by crisis.

10. Team, workplan & budget

In addition to these key criteria, all shortlisted applications invited to the Full Proposal stage will have their team, workplan and budget assessed to determine the feasibility of their approach and the applicant’s ability to deliver a high quality project.

Please see our Humanitarian Innovation Guide for details about these stages.

We recognise that meaningful participation must happen at all stages of humanitarian programming, from programme design and inception, through to implementation and evaluation. However, we know that the timing and size of this funding opportunity is unlikely to enable applicants to run projects that span all stages of humanitarian programming.

Expected activities and deliverables

If selected, you will be expected to complete the following activities and deliverables:

Develop or adapt proposed mechanism to increase meaningful participation

Your proposed mechanism can be completely novel (invention) or an adaptation of an existing mechanism from another humanitarian or different context. Its development will require the participation of people with disabilities and older people, as well as representative organisations to ensure that the mechanism addresses existing barriers and is inclusive, accessible and ethical.

Develop proposed assessment method

In parallel to developing the mechanism for participation, you will be expected to further develop and refine your proposed assessment method, as well as relevant metrics and indicators.

Implement/pilot participation mechanism

All projects will implement their mechanisms in their chosen humanitarian setting.

Assess the effectiveness of the participation mechanism

During and following implementation, you will be expected to assess the effectiveness of your mechanism using your proposed assessment method. At the end of the assessment, you will be expected to collect lessons learned and reflections on the quality and usability of the assessment method used.

Ongoing sharing of learning with other Challenge grantees

Throughout the grant period, you will be expected to share lessons learned, challenges faced and emerging insights with the Challenge cohort. The sessions will be organised by the HIF and are likely to be conducted virtually. You will be expected to support with the co-design of these sessions and suggest meaningful ways to engage and share relevant content with the rest of the Challenge cohort. You will be expected to allocate at least three equivalent staff days in your budget to engage in and make the most of these sessions. It will be mandatory for at least one representative from each project to join these sessions.

Disseminate lessons learned and drive uptake

In addition to the ongoing sharing of learnings with the Challenge cohort, you are expected to communicate publicly about your research on an ongoing basis, and to have a final write-up of your project learnings and outcomes readily available for public dissemination by the end of the grant (ie, 30 September 2022). You will share key findings and recommendations from the project and the appraisal of your mechanism in clear and accessible formats. These should be suitable to share with the community affected by crisis, and easy for other practitioners to learn from and use and/or adapt to different humanitarian settings. Example formats that you may consider include, but are not limited to, community workshops, reports, webinars, blog posts, and open-access peer-reviewed papers. Any other dissemination activities before/after the end of the grant are encouraged. See Report and Share Results section in the Humanitarian Innovation Guide for more info.

If successful in your application, you will be required to report on your progress via written reports, verbal conversations, communication outputs and/or through possible monitoring visits. Details on the reporting requirements and timings will be shared at the contracting stage, as well as details of our Incident Prevention and Management Policy procedures and feedback mechanisms.

Challenge timeline

8 July 2020: Challenge launch

The Challenge launches on 8 July 2020.

There will be a pre-recorded guidance video on the Challenge webpage for those interested in applying.

7 August 2020: EoIs deadline

The deadline for EoIs is 7 August 2020 at 23:59 BST. Apply via the Common Grant Application platform.

w/c 17 August 2020: EoIs shortlisted

EoIs will be reviewed against the eligibility criteria outlined in this handbook. Shortlisted projects will be notified in the week commencing (w/c) 17 August 2020.

24 August 2020: Full Proposals open

All shortlisted projects will be invited to submit Full Proposals from 24 August 2020.

2 September 2020: Mandatory webinar

Shortlisted projects will receive general feedback via a group webinar on 2 September 2020. There will be two webinars (AM/PM UK time) to suit different time zones. Attending the webinar is mandatory for qualifying for the Full Proposal stage. Please hold this date in your diary.

18 September 2020: Full Proposals deadline

The deadline for Full Proposals is 18 September 2020 at 23:59 BST. Full Proposals will be reviewed by independent technical reviewers. The final project selection will be made by the HIF’s independent Funding Committee.

November 2020: Project(s) selected

Successful projects will be informed in November 2020.

November 2020–January 2021: Due diligence

Due diligence and contracting is expected to take place between November 2020 and January 2021. Please see the FAQs on our website for more information.

February 2021: Projects start

The projects are expected to start in February 2021.

February 2021–September 2022: Project activities ongoing

Grantees will have between 15 and 20 months to carry out all the activities described in their projects (including any dissemination activities).

30 September 2022: Projects complete

All projects must be completed by 30 September 2022 without the possibility of extension.

Application and evaluation process

To apply for this Challenge, register via our Common Grant Application platform. For more information and guidance on our grant application process see our Application Guidance & Support page.

We know that the global COVID-19 pandemic has impacted ‘business as usual’ operations in many humanitarian settings, and for many humanitarian organisations and responders. We’re confident that the problems set out in this Innovation Challenge are still relevant, solutions are still needed and that progress towards developing them can still be made. We encourage you to share any specific considerations or potential adaptations to your approach in response to the current global context in your application.

The application and evaluation process for this Challenge will include the two stages – Expression of Interest (EoI) stage and Full Proposal stage.

At the EoI stage, you will be asked to submit details about your project and explain how it meets a selection of the criteria outlined in this handbook. Our ambition is to keep the EoI application stage as succinct as possible while still ensuring we have sufficient information about your project and proposed innovation and the extent to which it aligns with the Challenge criteria. EoI appraisal will include a review against the eligibility criteria outlined in this handbook (see Eligibility criteria section). To help you assess whether this funding opportunity is suitable for you, there will be a guidance video and a FAQ section available on our Challenge website. Please get in touch with our team (hif@elrha.org) to clarify any points not covered by this handbook.

If your application is eligible, you will be invited to submit a Full Proposal. This will request additional information about how your proposed mechanism and assessment method are innovative, details regarding the setting and existing evidence, and expansion around partnerships, ethics and learning. You will also be invited to attend a mandatory webinar on 2 September 2020 that will give general feedback on the EoI stage and more information on the requirements for the Full Proposal (at least one member from each selected project must attend).

Full Proposals will first be reviewed by our HIF team to ensure they remain within the parameters of the Challenge. Full Proposals that are within the Challenge parameters will then be evaluated by at least two independent technical reviewers based on the assessment criteria (see Assessment criteria section).

Our HIF team will shortlist the strongest ranked applications following the independent technical reviews. Guided by these technical reviews, our independent Funding Committee will assess the shortlist and make the final funding decisions.

Glossary

Adaptation

A stage of the humanitarian innovation process that involves identifying the changes that are required to adapt an existing solution to a new context. Adaptation of a solution entails significant rethinking of certain elements. For more information see the Humanitarian Innovation Guide.

Effectiveness

The extent to which an activity achieves its purpose, or whether this can be expected to happen on the basis of the outputs.²¹

Humanitarian setting

Refers to different phases of humanitarian response (eg, rapid response, protracted emergencies, acute emergencies), site (eg, camp, urban), geography, environmental conditions, type of humanitarian crisis (including natural hazard-related disasters, conflicts, or complex emergencies, either at the regional, national or sub-national levels, within lower- or middle-income countries). Also considers social norms, religion, demographics and political situation in that setting.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a statement to be tested, which helps the project team to better understand the assumptions made about a given innovation. Innovations are almost always based on assumptions as there is an inherent level of uncertainty associated with trying something novel or different to achieve better results. Knowing this, hypotheses should be set in order to test the assumptions for an innovation and generate evidence on how and whether it achieves the desired result.

Inclusion

Inclusion means a rights-based approach to community programming, aiming to ensure persons with disabilities have equal access to basic services and a voice in the development and implementation of those services. At the same time, it requires that mainstream organisations make dedicated efforts to address and remove barriers.²²

Intersectionality

This means the interaction of multiple factors, such as disability, age and gender, which can create multiple layers of discrimination, and, depending on the context, entail greater legal, social or cultural barriers. These can further hinder a person’s access to and participation in humanitarian action, and more generally, in society.²³

Invention

A stage of the humanitarian innovation process that involves an iterative process that identifies, adjusts and diffuses ideas for improving humanitarian action. See more in our Humanitarian Innovation Guide.

Meaningful participation

People with disabilities and older people are able to participate fully and effectively in decision-making and in the processes for designing, developing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating humanitarian programmes, policies and interventions, as relevant. Participation is an individual choice not limited by cultural, identity, attitudinal, physical, communication or legal/policy barriers.

Older people

Older people are a fast-growing proportion of the population in most countries, but are often neglected in humanitarian action. In many countries and cultures, being considered old is not necessarily a matter of age, but is linked to circumstances, such as being a grandparent or showing physical signs of ageing, such as white hair. While many sources use the age of 60 and above as a definition of old age, 50 years and over may be more appropriate in many of the contexts where humanitarian crises occur.²⁴

Older person’s association (OPA)

OPAs are community-based organisations of older people, aimed at improving the living conditions for older people and for developing their communities. OPAs utilise the unique resources and skills older people have to provide effective social support, to facilitate activities and deliver services.²⁵

Organisation of persons with disabilities (OPD)

OPDs are usually self-organised organisations where the majority of control at board level and at membership level is with people with disabilities. The role of an OPD is to provide a voice of their own, on all matters related to the lives of people with disabilities.²⁶

People with disabilities

Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.²⁷

ALNAP (2016) “Evaluation of Humanitarian Action Guide”

IFRC (2015) “All Under One Roof, Disability-inclusive shelter and settlements in emergencies” p. 10

ADCAP (2018) “Humanitarian inclusion standards for older people and people with disabilities” p. 253

Ibid, p. 254

HelpAge (2009) “Older people in community development.” p. 2

CBM (2017) “Disability-Inclusive Development Toolkit” p. 163

UN CPRD (2006) “Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) Article 1 – Purpose”

Apply for the Challenge!

Apply for the Challenge via our Common Grant Application platform by

7 August 2020 at 23:59 BST.

For any questions that are not covered by this handbook, please see our Application Guidance page or email us at hif@elrha.org, and ensure you reference ‘Meaningful Participation Challenge’ in the subject line.