Background

The Provention Consortium organised the Applied Research Grants Program for Disaster Reduction to support innovative action research by young professionals from developing countries. The program was managed by the World Bank’s Hazard Management Unit (HMU) in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin – Disaster Management Center (UW – DMC), the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) and Disaster Mitigation for Sustainable Livelihoods Programme (DiMP), University of Cape Town, South Africa. ADPC was responsible for the grants awarded to grantees from East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) and South Asia. After the first successful round of the grant in 2003-2004, the second round with a period of 9 months has started in September, 2005. Applications with proposals were invited from researchers under the age of 35, and were reviewed by an independent review panel which made the selection on a competitive basis.

Grants to researchers from Asia

Of the 55 grants awarded world wide, 22 were from the East Asia, Pacific and South Asia regions. The country wise distribution of grantees was as follows:

List of Grantees with Project Title

ADPC contributions

ADPC was an implementing partner which played a key support role in the grants program as follows:

ADPC provided widespread dissemination of the announcement of the grant awards scheme and invited applications from young professionals through an announcement in its newsletter, on its website as well as sending the call for applications to over 300 partner organisations in universities, technical institutions, Government departments, Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies, NGOs, research institutions, UN Agency regional and country offices. Each addressee was in turn requested to publicise the scheme among their partners.

Once selected, direct communication was established with each grantee and their mentor/advisor. This conveyed terms of the grant, reporting requirements and communication details within ADPC.

In addition each grantee was offered a DM information kit based on a selection of reading materials, and offered information support in terms of access to specific documents in the ADPC library, to be identified by the grantee through an online search.

Effort was made to link each grantee with DM organisations in country in the government and NGO sector, academics and ADPC staff interested in their area of study.

Based on receipt and review of the initial and mid term reports, ADPC provided some input and guidance on maximising the impact of the study being undertaken. This was primarily in the form of encouraging establishment of links with the local government and community based organisations in the area of study, undertaking a suitable form of communication with the community being studied through preparation of a communication product (e.g. booklets, posters) and feeding back the results of research.

ADPC coordinated the disbursement of grant payments in three instalments and undertook scrutiny of receipts and the compliance of expenditure with grant norms.

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