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Published in The Express Tribune, December 10, 2010<\/p>\n
LAHORE: The USAID launched its Small Grants and Ambassador\u2019s Fund Programme on Thursday.<\/p>\n
An introductory seminar for the new programme was held at the Pearl Continental Hotel. The initiative will cover three programmes: the Civil Society Grants programme, the Gender Equity Programme and the Grant Programme for Community-Based Organisations. Beth Paige, USAID director of the Lahore Field Office; Shakeel Kakakhel, chief of party; Charles Cutshall, the USAID Democracy and Governance adviser; and Seema Kamal, the Aurat Foundation director, spoke at the seminar.<\/p>\n
The programmes will focus on the health, education, governance, agriculture and energy sectors and on economic growth, social assistance (rehabilitation of floods and other disaster affected areas) and gender equity. It is the first time that the USAID has launched a programme which will directly deal with the organisations working at the grassroots level. These organisations can get up to a $250,000 grant for a single project.<\/p>\n
Charles Cutshall who designed the grant programme said, \u201cWe are selecting experienced people, who can help us achieve our goals. SGAFP is my child and I don\u2019t want to spoil it.\u201d The USAID has selected the Aurat Foundation for working on gender equity and for socio-economic issues its working with the NRSP.<\/p>\n
Shakeel Kakakhel said, \u201cPreviously majority of the funds were spent on the security of foreigners heading the projects. Now with civil society members directly involved, the projects will be more effective.\u201d<\/p>\n
A large number of civil society members from rural Punjab participated in the seminar. For their convenience, USAID has made forms in Urdu. $135 million has been allocated under the 5-year programme.<\/p>\n
According to Charles Cutshall, the office of Inspector General will be involved in accountability and a telephone line service \u201chotline\u201d will give citizens direct access to USAID to record their complaints on the misuse of the funds.<\/p>\n
There are three main objects of this programme: strengthen the voice of citizens, organisational development and improved accountability. Expressing her reservations, Shaista Khalid from the Community Support Concern said, \u201cHandling regional organisations and accountability is not easy. I think the hotline will create problems as jealous rivals or prank callers will pester the workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
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[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1528367484732{padding-top: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}”][vc_column width=”1\/1″ id=”blogpost”][vc_column_text] Published in The Express Tribune, December 10, 2010 LAHORE: The USAID launched its Small Grants and Ambassador\u2019s Fund Programme on Thursday. An introductory seminar for the new programme was held at the Pearl Continental Hotel. The initiative will cover three programmes: the Civil Society Grants programme, the Gender Equity Programme and the Grant Programme for Community-Based Organisations. Beth Paige, USAID director of the Lahore Field Office; Shakeel Kakakhel, chief of party; Charles Cutshall, the USAID Democracy and Governance adviser; and Seema Kamal, the Aurat Foundation director, spoke at the seminar. The programmes will focus on the health, education, governance, agriculture and energy sectors and on economic growth, social assistance (rehabilitation of floods and other disaster affected areas) and gender equity. It is the first time that the USAID has launched a programme which will directly deal with the organisations working at the grassroots level. These organisations can get up to a $250,000 grant for a single project. Charles Cutshall who designed the grant programme said, \u201cWe are selecting experienced people, who can help us achieve our goals. SGAFP is my child and I don\u2019t want to spoil it.\u201d The USAID has selected…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21843"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22494,"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21843\/revisions\/22494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nrsp.org.pk\/sgafp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}