Grants for developing country researchers studying poverty issues
The Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) Research Network (www.pep-net.org) announces a call for proposals for its 2008 competition, in which up to 29 grants for a total value of $CAN 1,800,000 will be awarded.
PEP provides financial and scientific support to teams of developing country researchers studying poverty issues. Specific objectives are to:
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Better understand the causes and consequences of poverty.
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Propose alternative strategies, policies and programs to reduce poverty.
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Improve the monitoring and measurement of poverty.
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Develop local research (and training) capacity in these areas.
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Develop new concepts and methodologies through fundamental research.
All team members must originate from and reside in a developing country during the course of the project. To maximize capacity building, we favor teams composed of at least one senior researcher supervising a gender-balanced group of junior researchers. In addition to the grants outlined below, all selected teams are also eligible for additional funding to participate in training workshops, PEP meetings, international conferences, study visits and other activities. Grants are awarded under four programs:
MPIA-PMMA Core Program: Six to nine grants of $CAN 20,000 (plus up to $CAN 30,000 in additional funding) will be awarded for proposals submitted to either our Poverty Monitoring, Measurement and Analysis (PMMA) or our Modeling and Policy Impact Analysis (MPIA) subnetworks, which have the following thematic priorities, although the subnetworks are open to proposals on other poverty-related themes. PMMA: Multidimensional poverty, public spending, intrahousehold allocation and poverty dynamics. MPIA: The poverty impacts of growth, public spending and agricultural policies. Both networks encourage research that integrates gender issues.
Deadline: January 7, 2008.
CBMS Network Research Grants: Up to nine grants of a maximum of US$ 50,000 will be awarded to research institutions, national government agencies and local government units from developing countries (except for countries where CBMS is currently being implemented i.e. Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam) for the development and institutionalization of a community-based monitoring system. Grant applications are categorized into two: (1) development and pilot-test of a CBMS, and (2) expansion and institutionalization of a CBMS. Aside from the financial support, grantees will be given opportunities to participate in the CBMS and PEP network training workshops and conferences, access to the CBMS network database as well as technical support from the network’s pool of technical advisors.
Deadline: January 7, 2008
PEP-AusAID Policy Impact Evaluation Research Initiative (PIERI): A maximum of six grants of up to $CAN 140,000 ($CAN 20,000 for the research component, up to $CAN 90,000 for the survey/experiment component in the case of experimental approaches, as well as up to $CAN 30,000 in additional funding) will be awarded to teams of developing country researchers to conduct policy impact evaluations. Projects should be designed to evaluate interventions that aim at improving human capital and alleviating poverty, e.g. child health programs, schooling programs, training programs, safety net programs. Projects that involve the design and implementation of a randomized experiment will have priority. On a practical level, researchers need not restrict themselves to new programs, but could randomize on innovations in the initial program. When designing an experiment, it may be useful to think of more than one treatment group, if it is not clear which delivery approach is optimal. Such designs make it possible to go beyond the question of whether a program has a positive impact to provide insights as to how to best design it.
Deadline (expression of interest): November 30, 2007.
PEP-OPHI Human Development Capabilities Initiative: Jointly with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI; www.ophi.org.uk), PEP will offer up to five grants of $CAN 20,000 (plus up to $CAN 30,000 in additional funding) for research on analyzing poverty in the multidimensional context of the capabilities approach. This initiative builds on the extensive work of OPHI on implementing Sen’s capabilities approach in developing countries and of the PEP network on multidimensional poverty analysis. Proposals are welcome for one of two themes, listed below:
Theme 1: Missing Dimensions of Poverty Data – in this theme, research teams are invited to undertake empirical analysis of all data from five modules of the proposed ‘missing dimensions’ (information and survey modules are available on www.ophi.org.uk). Teams are not asked to conduct a large survey. They may choose to use new data that are in the process of being collected, or to undertake qualitative, ethnographic and/or participatory work alongside a small quantitative survey in order to probe the validity and strengths and weaknesses of the survey instrument in particular contexts.
Theme 2: Identification and Multidimensional Poverty – in this theme, research teams are invited to critically examine identification techniques and weighting options for multidimensional poverty measures. Research teams may choose to use a new identification method or various existing multidimensional poverty measures and
intersection/union approaches. They may also choose to explore further issues of weighting and adjustments for interconnections between variables.
Deadline: January 7, 2008.
PEP School: PEP’s African office at the "Consortium pour la Recherche Йconomique et Sociale" (CRES) in Dakar, Senegal, is launching in October 2007 the first session of the PEP school for training economists in poverty and economic policy impact analysis. The 2007/08 training session focuses on the theme of modeling the micro impacts of macroeconomic policies and shocks. The training session consists of the following three separate activities: six weeks of distance learning courses (October 15 to November 25, 2007); a two-week training workshop (December 3-15, 2007) in Dakar; and eight weeks of distance technical support (January 21 to March 15, 2008). The 2007/08 training program is offered in French only. In the near future, we plan to develop a separate training session on poverty monitoring, measurement and analysis, and to offer all training activities in both French and English.
Deadline: September 30, 2007.
For more information and to submit a proposal, please consult the "Call for Proposals" section on the PEP web site (www.pep-net.org). PEP is funded by the Australian Aid Agency (AusAID; www.ausaid.gov.au), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA; www.acdi-cida.gc.ca) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC; www.idrc.ca).
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