MAVC Grand Challenge for Development

During the period June 2013 - November 2017, MAVC issued 178 grants in the 12 target countries as follows:  - 57 innovation grants, focused on finding and testing new ideas.  - 15 Global Innovation Competition awards, via 3 competitions.  - 38 scaling grants, taking proven concepts to scale.  - 61 research grants, building knowledge on how technology is being applied across the wider governance field, and supporting practitioners to learn about how their projects are working.   - 7 tech hub grants to foster innovation for social change, establishing avenues for mentoring and peer support, and fostering new partnerships across technology, civic activism and government actors.  At outcome level, the programme met two of its three indicators:  - More than 3,15 million citizens received a response (or benefit from a response) from government agencies (target: 1,2 million citizens).  - More than 48 incidences of policy change resulting from MAVC work across 27 projects (target: 20 incidences of policy change). The third outcome on % of citizens that have been in contact and beleive that reporting deficiencies in public services is likely to lead to some improvements, did not achieve the set targets. A limited data set indicated some progress, but clearly below targets.  A few project examples that have contributed to the above outcomes:  - Black Sash, South Africa: which identified illegal deductions from social security payments to vulnerable individuals, and successfully sought redress from government. Black Sash estimate up to 2.5 million individuals are affected; government has confirmed 1 million.  - MOPA (Mobilisacion Participativa), Mozambique, which developed an app to enable citizens to report illegal rubbish dumping around Maputo, and government contractors to respond in clearing it.  - Caritas Kitui (Kenya) developed new offline processes for women to become involved in community discussions with government about county-level grants. Up to 600,000 women were involved.  - Kwale Youth and Governance Consortium (KYGC), Kenya: digital mapping and community mobilisation to broker receipt at community level of mining revenue payments made to county government. In addition to securing mining jobs for Kwale youth, better treatment of households and villages affected by mining operations, and county government, the KYGC advocacy work arguably contributed to the drafting and passing of county regulations and policy on mining.   - Common Matters programme, Uganda: worked with local civil society organisations (CSOs) to use radio and SMS polling to identify and mobilise support for a campaign issue. A campaign by the Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPS-Uganda) led the Ministry of Health to ban the import of non-qualified ‘rapid diagnostic tests’ for malaria. The programme has generated more than 135 knowledge products, including peer-reviewed research papers, targeting a range of audiences from practitioners to academia. 

Making All Voices Count is a Challenge Fund that worked in 12 countries across Asia and Africa, managed by a consortium of three partners: Hivos (consortium lead), Ushahidi and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS). Funded by DFID, USAID, Sida and the Omidyar Network, it existed to nurture innovative approaches to strengthening citizen engagement and government accountability through four streams of work:• Innovation and competition: To identify and secure new and exciting grantees, as well as provide mentoring and support countries’ technology ecosystems.• Country programmes and collaboration: To provide thematic, country-based grants, combined with partnership-building and policy activities in priority countries of Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, South Africa and Tanzania.• Research, Evidence and Learning: To strengthen the evidence base on what works and why in improving citizen engagement and responsive, accountablegovernance; and help Making All Voices Count grantees learn from own practiceand wider evidence base.• Global action: To shape international discourse and influence policy andpractice around citizen engagement and accountable governance. The expected impact of MAVC is "All people, including the poor, are able to engage and call to account public and private institutions on policy issues that matter the most to them". The expected ouctome is "improved relationships and increased opportunities for constructive dialogue between citizens and governments in MAVC countries".