ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) – West Africa Resilience Innovation Lab (WA RILab) is pleased to announce and invite applications for the Collaborative Resilience Innovation Design for Food Security and Diversified Livelihoods in the face of Rapid Urbanization (CRID4FAL) Grants.

Are you working on an innovative idea or approach that has the potential to strengthen the resilience of communities dealing with rapid urbanization? The CRID4FAL call is sourcing innovative ideas that can contribute to resilience building in areas affected by recurrent effects of rapid urbanization.

Through CRID4FAL, RAN is looking to select a team of motivated, experienced and innovative resource persons who will then co-create a collaborative, complementary ecosystem of projects designed to strengthen resilience of communities by building their agency to improve and transform agricultural practices and markets that have control of the agricultural value chain, improve the waste management skills and to diversify to profitable enterprises, in ways that are environmentally sustainable. The projects will fit together to deliver services on a common systems level platform (e.g. the ability to use the same mobile-based customer payment system). Applications submitted through CRID4FAL will be used as a basis for selecting a team of co-creators from different disciplinary backgrounds and organizations. The selected team members will then collaborate to transform their ideas into a set of fundable projects that have shared platform integration features.

In the first step of the CRID4FAL process, the WA RILab invites ideas addressing three priority innovation challenges for resilience building around rapid urbanization and its associated shocks and stresses:

·  Innovation Challenge 1: Transform Agricultural Practices and Markets
·  Innovation Challenge 2: Improve Water, Sanitation, Hygiene & Health
·   Innovation Challenge 3: Promote Livelihood Diversification & Financial Inclusion

Phase 1 grants ranging between US$ 30,000 to $100,000 are anticipated for each team formed around the final set of projects selected from those co-created by the co-creation team. The CRID4FAL Call is open from September 15 to October 17, 2016 11:59 pm GMT (local time in Ghana).

For details, updates and to apply, please visit www.grants.ranlab.org. Follow RAN @AfricaResilient @WARILab #CRID4FAL and like us on Facebook RAN and Facebook WA RILab  for more opportunities.

For further inquiry, please email us at support.warilab@ranlab.org or contact the WA RILab Offices at the WA RILab Innovation Lab, Dungu Campus, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana, and phone: +233 502253500 / +233 248326626.

Together we can positively transform communities using “Solutions through Innovation”.

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