Sample research proposal

http://lirneasia.net/2008/08/call-for-ict4d-grant-proposals/

‘Participation, ICT & Local level Good Governance’is the name of my action research proposal. We are already piloting with one union parishad in south west Bangladesh.We are providing virtual services on agriculture to the farmers, health, education etc. This union parishad is now email connected.Biggest need here is around micro borrowers in order to make their investment profitable so that they can repay loans and make livelihood out of loan operation.Since we are located in union parishad building our understanding of union parishad operation is deepening and trying to specify where exactly union parishad role can be interfaced in between community empowerment and ICT.Or how to enhance Union parishad capacity to facilitate the process.

Ministry of Local Government,Bangladesh with support from a donor consortium, is going to support fifty unions very soon . We are negotiating nine unions [union parishad is lowest tier of government administration in Bangladesh]where union parishad will remain responsible for the project captioned UIC [Union Information Center].We are curious to learn from the action process - what are the relative weightage of community empowerment and information [ICT] in bringing changes in various sectors including agriculture, health, education etc with active role of union parishad.

One hypotheis is - without community empowerment demand led ICT will not be achivable. ICT itself has in born tendency of being supply led,crippling sustained impact.Initial positive outcomes must be transformed into longterm sustained impact.Computer itself is not Aladin’s lamp.However, potentially it is Aladin’s lamp,if manouvered properly.Local governance so far worked as extension of central government. New opportunities have been created in Bangladesh for enhanced space for local governance. Such initial euphoria will not last long without investment in capacity building of union parishads through participatory research and participatory planning where community takes lead in identifying their own issues and make decisions to interact with officials of local govrnment. ICT brings here additional muscle of information- connecting villages with the global village in this flat world.

From GonoGobeshona [participatory research]a registered NGO in Bangladesh, working since 1988, is hereby registering interest to work on relative weightage of Participation [ experiential learning of the people], ICT [external Information]in bringing change and ending poverty.Role of union parishad as institution comes because some where these grassroots learning has to be stored and conituously refreshed from the field ideas to fix in the next round of planning and implementation. In our situation union parishad is best suited to institutionalize such new knowledge generated out of people’s own experintial learning and extrnal information viz ICT.