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AL RAQQA, SYRIA 2022
RealtimeAid set up a programme based up on a participatory decision making process to ensure decision making on what kind of projects are funded are decided upon by local people. The process includes a local survey of needs and wants of the local community leveraging our local network to access grassroots stakeholders - including women, and youth
An online application was designed to be purposefully simple and lead to over 250 applicants responding within the space of two weeks.
Local players used an online, collaborative tool to decide on who will get a sum of money to support their projects. The online tool is used so the process is transparent and we can understand better what drives decision-making.
HOW DOES THIS WORK?
Applicants follow a simple onboarding process specifically designed for the context. The below is a summary of the process and questions applicants follow:
- Applicant information video guides them through the application process. The Project Video includes the creating a project table (challenges and solutions) LINK]
- What are the problems or challenges that you want to help change ?
- How will your project respond to the challenge ?
- Why is this important to you and the community ?
- Budget (Applicants can set "stretch goals", a minimum and maximum goal for each budget line.) If your idea can be realised with less funds, please fill out the minimum and maximum budget you need for each item in the budget section of your project page.
- If you have pictures to visualize your idea - great!
See this Video on how the Platform works:
ATTENTION: Only after your idea has been pre-screened and approved, it will be published and can then be financed!
Once your idea is published, other community members can see the project and leave comments.
PLEASE check your project regularly to see if there are any suggestions for improvement or feedback from the decision makers or other participants in the comments.
After the application deadline, representatives of the below stakeholder groups will decide within a week if and how much of the available funds they will allocate to your idea:(The Cobudget platform gives Community Voters user virtual money through which he can express his opinion on the projects on the application by donating to these projects with the virtual money s/he has, this is a way to find out what projects the civil society in the city of Raqqa would like to support).
TIMELINE
Open entry on CoBudget (Idea Holders can put in their project information and include their videos.) 28th April
Community Voters can comment (anonymous) and - add virtual money: (5th of May- 11th of May)
Approval or rejection of the applicants: 22nd of May 2022
Accordingly, selected Community Voters (RealtimeAid staff are not involved in the prioritisation of projects or in participatory decision making apart from commenting on projects) will have the broader task to assess the overall information provided and apply their professional judgement to it, rather than scoring a range of specific award criteria, as is typically the case. The process is designed to make it as easy to apply as possible (Ideas Holders can provide the information they already have rather than fitting lengthy content into specific award criteria), and because we acknowledge that a Community Voters will in any case have to apply a professional and yet subjective judgement in the assessment process. So, we want to enable that rather than focusing on rigorous scoring of sub-criteria that may not capture all the real value of an initiative.
Based on the virtual fund, RealtimeAid will invite the Ideas Holders to the next and final Stage before we can start supporting the project.