‘At the beginning of April INCE Benin received a notification that its concept note submitted in August 2020 as part of a call for proposal from the Education Out Loud fund, has been approved,’ tells Jean Moise, Grant Developer and Program Director of DEDRAS Benin. The INCE team has been working hard to acquire the grant, so we are very grateful that we are one step closer to work on improving education policies!
The approvement of the concept note is a great success, because after a competitive call for applications in June 2020, 461 concept notes from a variety of organizations were submitted from 53 countries. After a thorough assessment process conducted by a selection panel of global independent experts, INCE Benin is one of the ten chosen organizations!
The call was submitted by the consortium of Dedras, Social Watch Benin and Woord en Daad. Social Watch is a national NGO network promoting citizen control and public action to bring about political changes for socio-economic development.
Improvement of education policies
The proposal focuses on the problem of low citizen participation in monitoring and dialogue on education policies with emphasis on the quality of education and gender. The objective is to improve the transparency and accountability of education policies by strengthening the role of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in national policy dialogue.
Specifically, it is about building the capacity of CSOs to (1) monitor the implementation of education policies and finances, (2) collect strategic data on the quality of education and use this data to hold duty bearers at all levels accountable and (3) to drive policy change. The CSOs will participate in policy dialogue at all levels and use the data to hold decision makers accountable and make suggestions for improvement of policies.
Ultimately, the proposal will have strengthened and engaged 77 associations of parents of pupils, 77 associations of mothers of pupils, 77 forums / associations of young people and children, 3 trade union confederations, 6 NGOs in the monitoring of education policies, the collection of strategic data intended for political changes.
Implementation of the grant
INCE Benin has been engaged in the implementation of the Year Zero of the said grant, which is a six month period to develop the full proposal in co-creation with the EOL. Jean Moise: ‘To make this process a success, INCE Benin took part in a webinar that enlightened teams from organizations whose concept notes were approved on Year Zero content.’ The objective is to do research, stakeholder mappings and test tools, in order to inform the full proposal phase.
‘As a result of this briefing, a Year Zero activities plan and budget were developed and submitted to RMU / EOL West Africa for approval. At this point, there is still a risk of not getting the grant. However, the process of developing the full proposal has already started with the consultation of the parties involved in the proposal.’ INCE Benin will work hard to further develop the full proposal and acquire the grant!