The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and USAID announce a request for proposals to participate in the co-creation of a civil society innovation program. Sida and USAID are seeking to work with civil society organizations (CSOs) and other partners who want to contribute to poverty alleviation and democratic development, through innovative initiatives that aim to strengthen civil society. 

The civil society innovation program is part of a broader partnership established in 2013 between the Swedish government and USAID: Science, Technology, Innovation and Partnership (STIP), which aims to promote game-changing innovations with the potential to solve long­ standing development challenges. 

The civil society innovation program seeks new and established approaches to innovatively promote, strengthen, and connect CSOs by fostering systems where groups can access techniques, tools, and technologies to address their most pressing issues. To develop this civil society support mechanism, USAID and Sida seek partners with which to journey through a so called co-creation process. This will potentially result in one or more programs that enhance traditional civil society development assistance through use and scaling up of new and/or proven approaches which address opportunities for civil society development. 

More information is available on the SIDA web page for the civil society innovation program. We recommend that you review the Concept Paper for Civil Society and the Civil Society Innovation Addendum available in the upper right corner of that web page. Please also review the USAID Development Innovation Accelerator Civil Society Innovation Addendum as well as the Dgisio Hubs Illustrative Concept Paper for Civil Society Innovation, both available here.

Please submit your expression of interest in English to:

CivilSocietyInnovation@usaid.gov  by 11:59pm EST, 17 August 2014.