The new $45 million initiative “Making All Voices Count” expects to begin making grants by mid-2013, according to an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, one of the four donors.
The $45 million will be dispensed over four years to support innovative ideas for how to help citizens and governments use mobile and internet tools.
Making All Voices County is a joint effort being administered through the United Kingdom development agency under the direction of a committee of the four donors: U.S. AID, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the U.K. Department of International Development and Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife.
An organization will be selected as the “fund manager,” probably in late February. Anticipating a rapid start-up schedule, at least one finalist is advertising for staff on a contingent basis.
Applications for grants probably will be accepted beginning around April-May 2013.
Making All Voices Count “will support the use of web and mobile technology in developing countries to amplify the voices of citizens, empower citizens to bring about change, and enable governments to open up and be more transparent and more accountable to their citizens,” as explained in a Nov. 13 kick-off speech in London by U.K. Secretary of State for International Development Justine Greening.
She also explained:
Making All Voices Count will provide support, prizes and know-how for people and organisations with the most innovative ideas for how to help citizens and governments use mobile and internet tools. Any software developed with support from this fund will be made open source, so that others can use it and adapt it to their needs. Making All Voices Count will live up to its name – I want it to help open more opportunities for women and girls to get their voices heard, particularly where mobile and internet tools can help them do that.
Another roll-out event was held in Washington Dec. 5 with a variety of speakers (see the website for video and transcript). U.S. Aid has contributed $15 million.
Victoria Ayer, U.S. AID Senior Anticorruption and Good Governance Adviser, told FreedomInfo.org that a project by the Indonesia group Solo Kota Kita which provides maps abut government services to residents in Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia, for the annual participatory budgeting process, is an example of the kind of project that might get funding.
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