How Do I Sign Hawaii Banking RFP

How do i industry sign banking hawaii rfp

hello friends and innovators great to have you today I know we've got some folks coming in joining the webinar today from the div program and other US aid grantees so we just want to say welcome thank you for joining us today this is the navigating partnerships and procurement process with US aid webinar I'm hoping you're here for the right one my name is Katie Shipley I work for dai supporting us say it's Global WS global development lab in Washington DC my job is really to help USA and supportive innovators like yourselves the ones joining us today to collaborate and connect with more traditional USA partners and programs to help your small business or organization scale your innovation so I'm hoping that everybody who's joined today has done their homework I know my colleague Joe Don frontiers who is helping to organize the webinar is going to share that link in the chat so that if you haven't done your homework you will do that afterwards but the homework essentially was watching a presentation called winning business with US aid which was presented by my colleague maik Carr Schnur who's on make maybe you can give a little wave okay hi everybody that's the famous voice y'all heard on the presentation and she did a great presentation on how to do business with US aid and what was a little bit different about makes presentation was it wasn't from USA on how to do business with them it was from an insider someone who wins business with USA and very regularly so she gave a lot of great insight tips and tricks on how to track and go after USA business and I hope that was very helpful to you all she's on the call today so that at the end if you've got questions and answers specifically about her presentation you have a chance to ask them to her and she can answer them live but one thing I think you saw in your presentation was not only about how you work directly with you I say but the enormous opportunities for innovators small businesses small organizations to work with USA through implementing partners so for those of you who are not as familiar with USA its business model the vast majority of its work is actually done by implementing partners on the ground and so they are can be a very valuable resource to innovators and others who are looking to do work with USA but they are a little intimidated by doing direct proposals for us abet cetera and through our work we've actually seen a lot of great examples of where innovators have benefited greatly from collaborating directly with USA to implement errs as far as building long-term relationships with them are even working with them on a single project in a single country and so by seeing the success of innovators collaborating with implementing partners we really thought we would take some time out in this webinar to help you understand what is this world of us a business and implementing partners how do you tap into it how can you leverage it for your own benefits so may provide a lot of detail on that in the presentation so we're not going to go into a lot of that today and the presentation portion of this webinar we want to leave the majority of the time for you all to be able to ask questions and have discussion with some of these experts and we have two panelists who are going to speak for about ten minutes each the first is Jeremy Haldeman from American Refugee Committee as AUSA implementer argc is you know does a lot of humanitarian assistance where the refugee camp work and I'm sure Jeremy will fill you in on more of their work but the important story that he's going to tell is the AR C's evolution to thinking and investing more and how they can be trying and innovative solutions being more innovative in the way they do development and really a RAC is just an example of what we've seen across USA it's USA it's implementing partners and increasing focus on the realization that development has to be done differently the realities on the ground and many other country for us a work is changing and so the way implementing partners do business is changing which is leading a lot of them to reach out to innovators and new partners to collaborate so he's going to give you an example of for their organization what the evolution has been and how they're thinking about innovation today second we're going to hear from the Zalman that from Evan cage MK hatchery he is an innovator just like you and he partnered with AUSA partner in success there was a lot of value add he experienced from working with that implementer so he'll give you a real insider look on the good and the bad and the risks and the benefits of working with us aid partners on the ground and programs on the ground so while they're talking please feel free to write your questions in the chat box you can just do a brief note so we know you've got a question when the panelists are done we will actually try to get you to try to unmute your mic and call on you one by one to actually ask your question live to the panelists you can also just write your whole question if you prefer and we'll ask it to the panelists we should have a lively QA discussion period after the panelists speak so with that I will turn it over to Jeremy and do we do me thanks Katie thanks for having me and welcome to everybody so yeah is Katie indicated I work for the American Refugee Committee and for a little bit of background on our organization we're about a 50 ish 60 million dollar nonprofit folks mainly humanitarian assistance in 11 countries around the world in Africa a couple in the Middle East and then two in Asia and so in the in the USAID implementer world we're consider relatively small Dan small to medium in in that larger University the mode I mean folks like us it's a lot of money his Katie indicated what we what a or C is don't over the course of the last couple of years is kind of shift the way that we're looking at approaching to development to both humanitarian assistance and development work that we do in our in our programming and by that what I what I'm saying is that we've actually tried to we've made a shift in terms of how we're looking at our ramming and cover going back to our donors and talking about how we think we should be making the change we have this kind of phrase that we say you know as you look at development over the course of the last you know 30 40 50 years a lot of work by organization other implementers USAID at the State Department etc has been great but the state of the world has shifted from you know really complicated to intensely complex now so I think it the time is right for new solutions and that's what we've been doing so what we have done is we have made the shift over the course of the last couple of years and we have about thirty percent of our funding is actually now what we call through diversified streams some of that is still USAID some of it still State Department's some of it still um within that 30 percent bucket but the point is is that the funding that we're trying to do to about 30 percent is not diversified what we mean by that is it's not the traditional RFP RFA now but 70 percent of our program is from state and ideally UN is still through those sources and through those mechanisms but about 30 percent it's not and so what we've tried to do with with that type of programming in that 30 percent bucket is shift the way that we're actually approaching our programming and we've found really great partners both within USAID and externally as well in terms of how they can do things differently a couple of things so like I said some of its USAID funding some of its funding out of the Global jia support community for the communities that were serving around the world some of the faith-based communities both here and abroad and then also we've engaged the private sector as well and what we try to do in terms of that diverse my bucket of funding is is this you know we believe is an organization that leaves is first and foremost to be a platform to actually bring folks together to help build out new types of programming so if in every if every day in the individual wants to try to make a difference in the world and help other people we want to be a platform to help make that happen so we're trying to bring new sets of people to the table to design solutions that that resonate in a new way and in a way that's actually going to still be impactful but is it but is but at the end of the day is is new and different and so what we're trying to do is work with partners and constituency's to provide new and different some instances better opportunities for the people we serve we also approach our programming by looking at you know we don't view the people we serve as beneficiaries of either with our customers so it's a bit of shift in the mindset to how we can then go about delivering services and the result of that has been a lot of focus on you know so in terms of differentiating our programming a lot of that has been focused on human centered design in innovation so we've been trying to build out this new model internally within us within a RC with some USAID input and funding with some UN input and funding but also with just looking at a much broader basket of donors in the world and one of the things that you know we're working now with with Katie's team on is if a RC is kind of know designed as an as an NGO to be a platform to bring all these different entities together write a donor and innovator any everyday individual and our customers that were serving how can we then look to test and scale innovations within our programming both in refugee camps and in summonses externally to those as well but because we're not origin we because we've organizationally restructured it you know to try to be this platform for designing new solutions we're really interested in expanding out the pool of people that we're going to bring to the table to look for new solutions one of the advantages in also just ism it's a basic function of not being a huge implementing partner is that we don't have the capacity internally to design our own new solution so part of our organizational restructure to be this platform is partly due to our size but what it's doing is its providing us the opportunity to bring more people to the table because we simply don't internally have that capability and I think that's where a lot of folks on the call can really come in so we're really interested in working with other people sorry I just shut my table working with innovators and other people to bring new solutions and especially one of the things is in refugee camps there has been a relative dearth of new solutions and new ideas for program and a lot of the new things that we're doing have been done in a couple of our refugee camps particularly in Uganda but we're looking for new ideas and new solutions where other people can come to the table to help us solve these new challenges in a new and different way I will say by way of full disclosure just in terms of how we work as it as an NGO we are really highly interested in in working with people who are gonna approach things from a different perspective gonna bring a new idea a new solution to the table and we do pay place a pretty high premium on something that is really different unique and innovative not that other folks don't but I say that I have to say that up front because it's it's a little bit of a poor Kannur organization but one of the other things that I want to kind of talk through as well is that in terms of this this bucket of diversified funding that I've talked about about 30% that we have it's not just USAID or UN or the State Department funding and one thing that that we feel strongly about as an organization is that you can't simply just keep going back to donors and say we want more money we want more money we want more money I would also recommend really utilized the folks at USAID for our is their knowledge their their network of reach their network of non-financial resources their brains their skills because what we have also found is that you know frankly especially within USAID and in some areas of the UM in some areas of the states partly we've actually found that there's really interesting innovative people who want to help design new solutions but then what also is going to come of that as then we're not simply just going and asking for more money from all of our donors all the time to do to try to eat do the same thing or to do something new that's different because they also think it's really imperative on the part of the implementer in implementing community that we also do have to lead on some of this you know I've worked in the federal government as well in in in its this is not a negative sometimes changing large processes can be different or can be it can be difficult to do to have them focus on new new and different solutions and directions so I think it's really imperative for us as a community to decide how to keep USAID and the donor community involved but also in that because they're going to have really good and they're going to have things or they're gonna have a there's a huge non-financial value to engaging with the Wis State USAID the UN etc but then it's also imperative on us to come up with new solutions and then prove out why they should then go back and look at designing processes in a different way I also just think it's a basic intellectual exercise said if you were going to ask to do something somebody to do something new and different you have to have some sort of evidentiary basis you have to prove have some sort of proof of concept that works now there's been a great shift frankly in the US government over the last couple of you know it's in the last decade or so to wanting to be more forward-thinking in and lean out on some of this stuff but I think it's we as a is the implementing community and its innovators we really have to also bring things that are that have already been tested and proved and some of that has to be done by working in different ways and coming back to USAID and then which is not just asking for money and part of the way that we have done that'll give a give two examples of how we've done that when we started our humanitarian assistance program in Somalia after in 2011 in the in the previous famine that was existing at that time we did it entirely using private funding we co-created a new program with I do the design thing firm in New York and the global Somali diaspora now our organization is based in Minneapolis which is home to the largest Somali community in the u.s. so we built out an entire humanitarian assistance program using human Center design co-creation and some using some new business models to then build out this humanitarian assistance program we proved that it worked and then as a result of them now we have we have ofda funding from USAID we have UN funding with UNHCR I think we have different funding you know kind of go down the list of donors but we approached it in a different way instead of going in to UNHCR USAID and say we want to try something totally new I'm going to a really difficult situation we give us X millions of dollars we took the reverse course and then and so we actually just figured out how to how to do this in a totally different way a new type of humanitarian assistance program and then as a result we proved that it could work in that with other resources that have come to the table the other weird place that we did it so it was a more traditional humanitarian assistance program the other place that we did it was in DRC and we actually used we worked with the faith-based community with USAID and got a GTA which the global Development Alliance funding mechanism through USAID to also build out a social enterprise which is a strip mall of businesses in the eastern DRC that we actually did you work with USAID over a course of three years USAID put about three million dollars eight million dollars a year into it which one organization are sizes is substantial but then we put privately fund raised outside of outside of the USA about three point two five to three point five million so again there we because we wanted to design a new solution we wanted to YouTube human centered design co-creation and this k nd of new set of business principles we had something that was partially proven and we have a similar closet that we proved in Somalia we then went back to USAID work with USAID to do this but then I will also say in that instance the value that we got from AIG was more than their three million dollars of funding so more than a million dollars over a year of funding so those are just a couple of examples that we have used practically to kind of put our money where our mouth is on wanting to do human Center design co-creation and come up with new different types of innovative solutions and in both instances we found the donors have been very very they've been wonderful to work with one instance we didn't ask for any money the other we did and so but then you know again it's just going back to my point that I think it's somewhere where as innovators and implementers we need to be leading maybe a little more out on the forefront of this finding new ways to do it but keeping continuing to have a working relationship with our donors because ultimately you're gonna get a huge value from them that is that sometimes it's financial and in many instances that we found it's actually more than that so I will I will stop the app anon nothing there in a massive effort they have to answer any thanks so much Jeremy and please if you have a question for Jeremy type it into the chat box and we'll get to it at the end after the song speaks and I just want to emphasize what Jeremy was just saying as far as how they've leveraged more than just financial resources with US aid and that's what we've seen with innovators collaborating with US aid our implementing partners as well is the real value that they can get out of just access to the expertise that are on many in many of these organizations that can be really helpful to a small business or small organization trying to expand i know meg and i touched on that point in the presentation that we sent around ahead of time as well so with that let's turn it over to nizam who will speak from an innovators point of view on what it's like thanks Katie good morning everyone and thank you Mike for that great presentation so I know Jeremy's been talking about the implementation side we are a black tiger shrimp hatchery so to just give you a quick background on Bangladesh is a is a mangrove area where black tiger shrimp is like a natural product so black tiger shrimp's been always farmed here for centuries but what we found when we built a hatchery in 2004 is that we already started to see the effects of overfishing and what we saw that every year the number of wild breeders that we could find from the trawlers we're getting less and less and they were becoming smaller in size and by the end of 2010 2012 we started to see that most of them carried a disease called white spot which was devastating crops in the farms so at that point my father he attempted to create a breeding program with help of CSIRO a university out of Brisbane but after two years we and without having enough funding we'd had to shut down that project and we continued to do run our hatchery in the conventional way with the wild breeders so in 2013 we met with Alana technologies from Hawaii and Andrew kuja's from aquatic farms and they they decided they put us together with the Feed the Future food for Innovation Fund and we put up an application to get a grant to start importing genetically improved disease free wild disease-free domesticated breeders from Hawaii so this is this was our first interaction with USAID and its implementer FINTRAC for the for this project and so throughout her throughout the next three years we've have we actually managed to work with us eight and a couple of their implementers in many different ways so the first the first time we interacted with USAID and FINTRAC it was in the form of assistance in what we would call we didn't get a grant for I don't know how the work is we didn't per se get a grant for building capacity or any way what we got was they provided Moana technologies with the grant and they supply to supplied us with the first 1,000 pairs of breeders and 4,000 parent post larvae so just to explain here the breeders are about eight months old and the posts are ver but you know twelve days old so we got these two batches and we started to get to work but we ended up finding out that we don't have technicians or marine biologist and by Nilesh were capable of taking these group readers and getting production out of it so after the first year when we couldn't meet our target [Music] FINTRAC and USAID came through again and this time they provided assistance in terms of technical assistance so they gave us a technical team a four member team that was there with us from February all the way until August to help us support our production and figure out what was what was so challenging about our environment in our hatchery that we couldn't take like a healthy breeder and put into production so that was 2013 and in 2013 with that assistance we were able to get a little bit of success we got our initial hint of sunlight if you win and we were able to produce about 30 million post larvae so in our hatchery we get the mothers and we sell post larvae to the farmers which they didn't grow out so after that stage we came in touch with AI the ein project which is another implementer for USAID VA and project which is aquaculture for me for income and nutrition they've been already working in in Bangladesh and to try and increase nutrition through aquaculture and in and also alleviate poverty so black tiger shrimp being a cash crop for our country is mostly exported so when they saw that we had the ability to produce disease-free pea seed we they got we got in touch with them and we were able to use their network of field agents who already in the fields supporting smallholder farmers with technical advice on how to raise fish how to feed fish how to sell them and all of this so that's the third time we partnered up with USAID and this time they were assisting us in increasing our capacity not only to produce also our capacity to reach small holder farmers because for us we you know we had a capacity of about 150 million pls post larvas and there's about 200 thousand small holder farmers and the entire market was for about 8 billion post larvae so there's no way that we could meet the demand or reach 200 thousand farmers just on our own in a small amount of time so once again there we leveraged the connections and the network that the AI n project had on the ground to support our marketing efforts so basically you know throughout throughout our you know business cycle USAID has been you know does that worry there we might have lost Nizam so until he comes back I'll try to finish his story which I think he was wrapping up because I am I do know and I've talked in the South about it many times but essentially you know as he was saying he leveraged this us a project and implementing partner to access a market of smallholder farmers and buyers that they couldn't have accessed individually doing contracts with thousands of small holder farmers wouldn't have been possible for them at that stage and so working with the project to consolidate those purchases helps their business grow and help farmers get more access to this superior product so they were able to produce more a better quality shrimp sell more and increase income so it really addressed the two issues of that project which were food security nutrition and income and Nizam I see you're back I was just doing a quick summary of your story but please feel free to continue no you're back no go ahead I look to finish I was just saying about how you leverage and I think it's a great example of how we've seen other innovators leveraging the same projects because many innovators are challenged with so many realities so many things that are out of their control but that affect their business and oftentimes USANA's they're helping to mitigate those problems so I can think of two other quick examples of a solar pump in the country right now but they were having to actually having trouble with farmers buying in a solar pump because there was no financing available but there was a USA Agriculture project that was there locally that was working on financing mechanisms for other purchases of farmers and created a financing mechanism for that solar pump so farmers were able to access it so those are really creative ways that you can you can confine USA projects that are relevant or working in this space where you're working you can really leverage them for the benefit of your organization and often if you're trying to address a problem they are also trying to address they're eager to work with you in the case of ms on the solution and what the ein project is trying to achieve the farmer so is on any other final comments on all of that no those are basically an overview of how we've interacted with the USAID just to mention that once the aian project ended we actually ended up hiring some of the people that were on the ground as as our you know salesman sales rep and technicians support field support so that was something you know that kind of worked out for us as well that's great yeah and that was one question they did have for you is how has the project ending affected you and what are your plans now so with like I said with the project ending we managed to hire a couple of the field level workers that were already marketing for us so we still maintain those those marketing chains and we're still going forward we've you know we were hoping to double our production this year to about 250 we managed to get to 180 we have some issues technical issues nothing to do with in a marketing or anything at all just we've had very bad weather cyclones and whatnot so other than that you know we're all geared up for next year and no hope for the best that's great so in some ways is it fair to characterize that as the Arian was was a helpful launching pad for you all and that you can continue to grow and expand beyond the term of that project absolutely that's great yeah because I think you know we're USAID's objective with trying to create these collaborations between its traditional partners and programs and innovators is not to create more us itself factories out of our innovators become innovators doing business with us a forever but we just want to see where those opportunities to create those launchpads where we can help get an innovation into a marketplace test it scale it and then be able to extract ourselves and have innovation and the innovator continue continue on successfully so um thank you so much for sharing your story it's one of my favorites we share with you so let's turn to some questions now from folks in the audience and the chat if you do have a question please just write it a shorthand version of it and we'll turn to you and unmute you so that we can ask that question and it looks like we'll start with Daniel yin Joe if you can unmute Daniel to ask his question just take one moment hello everyone hi Daniel good to see you nice to see you everyone - thanks for having me we're each awaiting it somewhere nicer than where I am uh yeah and Kampala Uganda actually I'm sitting right outside her office so you can see you know our yard and everything um so yeah I had a quick question um and it's mostly because right now we right now we are supplying like water filters to many refugee camps and one of them being Beatty Beatty which is now the largest refugee camp in the world and we were wondering like how to establish these partnerships with other organizations like a RC or the UN or other companies like them so that sounds like a question for Jeremy if you have any insights do anything on B Jeremy I think um can you all hear me yeah yeah continue thanks for your question and thanks for your work you know what I think my initial response would be so your basic your basic you know most the UN organizations have significant offices in Kampala I know we do so I don't know if you've engaged on the within the local country offices with other implementing partners or with the UN offices or agencies if you have not please feel free go and I think my contact information will be shared you know generally speaking most most implementing organizations will have can Uganda do have offices in Kampala and then you know the UN will have offices in Kampala and they have regional offices several offices all the way okay have you tried to connect with any of those folks Janna Daniel I don't believe with you AR but I know we've partnered with Oxfam in the past and we supply 500 filters 500 plus filters to bdbd a few months ago actually so I could you know reach out to the Kampala offices I know there are a lot of NGOs based there like just as Jeremy said so yeah that helps a lot and then you can I just put you on the spot for a second and asked if you have ever collaborated with Oxfam before and you found that through that collaboration are they interested in taking your technology to their locations or some of their other camps because it led to a longer-term relationship I guess my question sorry you're breaking out a little bit but I think I got the question mom yes that it actually has brightened they actually recently bought a few more filters around 60 and they're supplying them also to low-income communities around Uganda so in like rural communities where they do not have access to you know clean water that's estimated around like 20 million people around you gotta at a forty million people don't have access to clean water so there's a there's a lot of potential here to continue working with other organizations that's great well we'll certainly keep you in mind as we can connect in our work with other implementers that may be relevant to you all and how connecting with any other organizations we think could be helpful knowing that you guys are looking that's good thank you so much thanks for joining us Daniel this is Jeremy I'll just add on also I'll get some more information if you don't mind for me go by yours when I can okay that sounds great thank you okay we've got a lot of questions coming in you mind if we go to page for sure next let's give a moment for Paige to connect with us and I think Jeremy this would be another question for you nice okay my webcam is out but Jeremy I'm interested in the notion you mentioned of sustainability here going to the the private sector first leveraging USAID's non-financial resources up front and then returning after a proof-of-concept and scaling with them very much after the fact at a funder level I'm interested in your story a little bit more maybe it'd be helpful if you could review the actual mechanism that you used at the end to work with my US aid financially and then maybe any advice you have for us engaging them early on to be really thoughtful about those non-financial resources you mentioned sure I'd be happy to so just as a point of clarification so the the first time we did this in Somalia we didn't wholly use in the private sector we did so that was so they were tight when I was giving the explanation they were actually two different models that we used one in Somalia where we we fundraise entirely the program to start the program out of the private sector and that will happen to be that instance was the global Somali diaspora for a program in Somalia the second one that I talked about we actually worked hand in hand with USAID throughout the process and that was that was utilizing that the funding mechanism with there are the team from AI D can explain this much better than I can it's called the G da it's a Global Development Alliance not which is I don't think it's necessarily a pot of resources and some mechanism but I'll defer to a ID team on that but what I was saying was that we wanted to do something differently so in Somalia we built out a program again using human centered design using co-creation and we did it entirely using private sector resources so we had someone of a we kind of we wanted to have a track record I mean we did to do it because it was the right thing to do it you know because we wanted to serve our customers in Somalia in a in a f eling different way but then we had our tea since we had already done it when we when we worked hand in hand with USAID and I do again and a different customer base this time in the eastern part of DRC we had had a model that we had built out so it was that we had a little bit of a proof of concept in terms of the process of how we were doing it so that was where we were so in that instance in DRC it was a different customer base it was a different concept but it was a similar process that we went about and in that instance we didn't use USAID funding to make put in a million dollars a year throughout the process around three years got it really helpful thank you thanks so much Paige appreciate your question and I think that leads to another question we actually got ahead of time and I'm hoping that our friend Jason preaches on has connected live with us and Joe if he has can you track him down and give him live he sent in a question that have time I think is really relevant for what we're talking about which is if this is an interesting Avenue for you thinking of a interest in leveraging US aid traditional implementing partners of programs but you don't know where to start to find those folks make found because of great advice on that and the presentations that we send ahead of time that you haven't already watch that please do but jason also asked this question which is what's the best way to find out which organizations are bidding on different or grants or contracts with us a ditto I see Jason he's there so Joe I don't know if you can try to connect him I'm here yes hello yeah I had a question typed into the box but I hadn't hit return yet so yes my question is exactly a katie you said but kind of twofold there's one what's the best way to find out who is bidding on different contracts so if we saw a big USA award for 180 million dollar Health System strengthening in a certain country and we thought that we could be a line-item you know in a larger proposal what's the best way to find out who is bidding on these contracts or these awards and the second question is in the same respect but even on a smaller gist of program level who are the people that we are trying to get into contact with if I'm cold calling somebody you know I think that there's an organization that's working on Ebola you know and we have something that we could really offer them who are we trying to talk to are we trying to talk to you a country director or a program director or you know that a head of business development in DC who who do we want to talk to and I'm sure it changes from project to project in a word award but just an idea of who we should be talking to is it would be very helpful thank you sure hey Jason good to see you again oh I'm doing well thanks okay let me see if I can answer this both parts of it redirects me if I miss any part so initially there are a few things you can do as you see requests for proposals coming out with scopes of work that where you might be of interest figuring out in advance and this for just requires a little bit of research and just working your contacts but you know of the implementing partners that are the traditional partners who aligns with that scope of work in particular and I can show you I'm gonna attempt in a minute to take you guys a website where you can get a flavor of the different implementing partners high-level overviews instead of having to go website by website for each partner to kind of see their service offerings so in terms of contacts within the organization you are correct that everybody's slightly organized differently but you can bank on two things and their business development staff will definitely be in the know about what's coming up and about hopefully about how those future opportunities dovetail with their existing contracts so I I feel comfortable starting with BDU that's my recommendation but also don't limit the question now what are the future opportunities but hey in addition can you introduce me to your current implementing staff that are working on related projects and that's gonna be super advantageous so that you're not just looking at that long Paltz time like I talked about in the video that the future lead time can be so long for US aid but getting that connection to the existing projects is key let me show you two things now I might need Joe's help to share my screen but let me see if this works is that working if I do this and you guys see about my screen now yes yeah great again okay so two things I wanted to show you and hopefully you guys saw from the webinar this fed FedBizOpps site which is where the US government releases all of their request for proposals and there's a comparable site called grants.gov which is where the RFA is come out for for cooperative agreements and grants I don't know if you've ever noticed towards the bottom you can actually I think it's at the top too but here they have this add me to interested vendors option to be honest a lot of the traditional partners don't click this you know we're watching things all the time so much that we don't necessarily express interest on this but you'll need to establish a username and password and I've done it recently it truly takes 30 seconds but then you can log in here and then another tab will be added to these two folders up top instead of just login and forgot my password when you're on a specific opportunity back up here you'll have another tab right here instead of just notice details and packages will be to see other firms who have also expressed interest that may help you know who to contact just as just to explore that Munim hey our here's what we offer there opportunities to maybe work together it may can I just ask a quick question there Greece is people are asking if firms that are bidding or asking questions is often there's like a QA period around the RFP yes like those made public where they posted and is that a good way to figure out who's bidding it can be yes they're made public and actually interestingly this effort this site that I have up right here would help you see that because over on the right hand side of the screen every amendment that's related to the original RFP will be posted publicly and those will include the QA it's not always the best indicator of who's bidding because firms don't always identify themselves in fact sometimes that's scrubbed from USAID's perspective and it helps because there may be reducing duplication so they don't put the same question in there four times if four different people ask it so you can't always tell who's bidding from the questions another issue was debris lying on that solely is sometimes in fact last night we even had a situation where QA came out 24 hours before a bid was do which is stressful not always helpful but that would be too late of an hour for and to be able to add the group in so I wouldn't wait and rely for the QA but it could be like one other way that you could just check maybe you can clean any information from that great thanks yeah okay may I take you just in one more place or if I'm not hugging too much time please okay okay so foreign assistance gov I mentioned in the webinar it is pretty powerful and this tracks not only the budget that US aid has per country but it attracts what money they've already committed that this is the home page here but they have this map you can go to the map and pick on a specific country this might be this actually relates to the question previously I think I already forgot the person's name who asked and if you wanted to see for example where could you interject your pumps into a specific refugee related project you could click on a given country you're probably over on the left side here you're not going to want to pick plans because that's what is the budget for future years you're gonna want to look more at the obligated or obligated money because that's like money u.s. eight is already committed to a project and then you can scroll down and and narrow it by technical area and refugee a lot of the refugee work might be related to peace and security and you can actually click into that and get more detailed and then with this view South Sudan data it'll export for you if you click over here an excel file with every expenditure every commitment u.s. eight is made and it identifies to which partners so that'll give you a starting point of knowing it's the smaller universe that I should be approaching if I want to be talking about a specific way that your innovation can add value to an existing project that'll give you the universe right there without having to look at every implementers website I think there's a lot of people really appreciate it great I for some reason can't see can't give me one moment everybody can EDA stop sharing my screen question or any clarifications anybody wants on what make just shared as well feel free to write it in and we'll jump back to her all right so one other question that we had was with limited resources how can we best determine which primes to team up with to win so this is all these two questions are really the bidding process at 1 USA wants to do a new project and they're looking for elementors to do it having putting out a request for proposals have a implementers respond not peace of the collaboration whereas others like Nizam had worked with projects once they were already up and running on the ground but with this specific question maybe maybe you can answer that you know there's multiple people bidding on something how do you decide to approach sure well it's interesting too because if you're approaching this from an innovators perspective where I think I clarified this on the on the webinar in advance but you know maybe you don't it's even aspire to have long term staff on the ground and for the longevity of the project it may be that you're you can infuse your value-add in a way that doesn't have to be limited to one offer like it's possible if you have a an innovation that you think will really augment the development impact of the project go ahead and pitch the idea to multiple firms and some of them may recognize like hey there's value in having you even if you're not exclusively on our bid I'm an ass for that ask do I have to you know I'd prefer not to be exclusive with you I think that this is something that would whoever wins the project this could add value to the final implementation so it's totally appropriate for you to ask for that so you could potentially bid with multiple bidders one other thing I haven't mentioned yet that we are actually asking us aid to encourage innovation by adding language to evaluation criteria there are rewards innovation being part of the design so as you're looking at different opportunities considering where do you want to jump on if there is evaluation criteria that recognizes the value of innovation for that project and would even apply more points that that in particular is going to be a place where you you will be valued excellent mm-hmm great that's great insight mega I appreciate it Paige have another question Paige do you mind if we just jump back to you to ask it live sorry I think I cut out great just asking back to the these non-financial resources from you and say do you have any advice around best practices for the US aid co-creation processes and GDA baa mechanisms great question I don't know I was thinking you turning it to grace Kim from US aid if you have any thoughts about that in chicken I know that's not exactly the area that you Joe we can unmute grace okay can you hear me okay great so Paige Katie is actually I'm going to throw it back to Katie at some point but Katie's actually leading are applied innovation program where she's specifically working with US aid missions or implementing partners who may have a particular request for a certain type of innovation to plug into their programming so that's one thing that we're doing at US aid another program that we've started to experiment with starting earlier this year is providing technical support technical assistance to some of our grantees so those are all non financial support like I don't know if a grantee is trying to replicate their sales strategy in a different country you know connecting them with consultants who might be able to help them come up with that strategy or perhaps you need a whole different way of doing business so it's more like operations focused so what we're trying to do is figuring out and also experimenting within our team is you know what are the best ways that we can support our grantee so that they can scale so that your core business becomes stronger so that you can actually make more impact in either the number of beneficiaries or customers but also geographically as well I don't know if Katie if you want to talk more about your applied innovation matchmaking program specifically about co-creation there are these new mechanisms that often include financial resources other resources but USA is experimenting with around the world through its missions and also here in Washington for how can we engage in debaters and new ways that aren't sort of those traditional procurement model that we were talking about with Meg I'm not as familiar with you know the being creation of mechanisms as some of my colleagues and I know I'm going to put one of them on the spot where I think it's joining us on the webinar who's Cole and Joe if you can look and see if she's willing to jump in here to share what resources that we there may be available that talk about especially VA and co-creation some of the best practices and some of the things that you know the latest sort of innovations around how USA is using those mechanisms to engage with innovators so just let me know if she's on and if she's not Paige what we'll do is I'll try to send any follow-up email to all the participants to share some of the latest thinking on those three specific models that you mentioned and great looks like us and Cole I hope you don't mind me putting on the spot but want to know get insights on this question hi Katie this is Komal I'm so sorry you cut out during the question itself sure I'm just looking actually at Paige have written the question about do you have any advice around the best practices for working with USA on GTA V or co-creation mechanisms and I know we had been working on you know best practices around that and you know I don't know from your perspective from the learning perspective you have can say a few words about where US aid is and using at least co-creation I know you have any insights for that you know absolutely so there have been a number of instances where innovators have really worked very very closely both on a co-creation systems prizes challenges and other types of innovative approaches and one instance is I'll talk in particular is the CS III initiative that's the civil society innovation initiative where they were able the innovators were able to work very closely in hand in hand with the conveners and the USAID donors to basically come up with what exactly was the problem that they were they were facing in their everyday work and how could they create feedback loops up to the donors as well as to the implementing partners to say these are the ways that we need to change the way that you're designing this program these are the you've designed this program in such and such a way but really that's not gonna actually address the problems that we see on a day to day basis so for example gotcha which is a group within USAID have issued a BA a on for the civil society initiative and to create a number of different regional hubs and they got to the co-creation in this is a couple of years ago they got to the co-creation and during the conversation during the co-creation itself where they were trying to get inputs from implementing partners and others they started realizing that the innovators themselves were saying we you're you're actually only listening to those organizations that are much more global in nature but you don't have a perspective that are regional as well as super local nature and so what they did was they completely redesigned the process so that they could have Co design and co-creation workshops at at regio al and local level and the process you know became a lot longer but they were able to design hubs that were servicing the needs for the innovators as well as some other civil society activists on a on a much more Street just a much more responsive basis so I think innovators have had a huge impact in the way that donors think about program design and and continue to adapt and iterate on program design and it's been a really interesting model in that sense great thanks so much : do you have any sense of how many of these bas have been issued around the agency and our mission intending to do every hearing that their missions are going to be using this type of mechanism to engage partners like innovators I don't have a number for you I know that the number is increasing every day because of stories like this so every time a mission here is about a particular project that has seeking success it just takes sort of one success story to get folks to really think about the fact that there's some real value here um so we've seen you know increasing interest there's a group within USAID called I design where they receive requests on this particular type of project on co-creation or prizes or challenges and they receive requests daily so I know the numbers are increasing and more and more missions as well as headquarters are looking at at these approaches I think I can take a look and see if I can get some numbers on the back end and report that out sure and we'll try to share some more general information about deviations which are basically just other ways to work with US aid but sometimes can be a little bit easier to access for small organizations or organizations that aren't built to work with us a day in and day out so we'll try to send some more information about those around to you almost so that you're familiar with them I did want to as going to Nizam and asked a question to him regarding your work with AI n which was the USA project we we were very glowing about how great it was to work with that but I do want to ask any questions about any challenges or struggles that come from working with a u.s. aid program we want to know the good bad and the ugly so that other innovators are you know I go into these relationships yeah Katie well you know there's a couple of couple of instances that we've worked with the aain and you know they've helped us out like I said the number one spot was you know be marketing right so in terms of that that was a great benefit to us they helped you know they helped us establish a presence in the market where we had none before and in terms of issues you know I think the only issue that we had was when we did receive some funding for increasing our capacity and in terms of number of tanks that we have to produce so we just found that it took a long time to get the wheels rolling in the funds disbursed so we actually missed like half of our season by the time time the funds came around and we could have our capacity to build out but other than that I mean I really have no complaints about you know our interaction with EIN or USAID for that matter that's great news oh I'm sure a lot of the dividend who joined us can also relate to the issue of how long it takes for funding to move sometimes sometimes there are special approvals that are needed and you know it isn't bureaucracy and that bureaucracy funnels down to the implementing partner in the program you know so there are sometimes some extra coups you have to go through to work with those programs successfully but it sounds like you guys are able to navigate that all and it worked out well for you great and at this point I don't see any other am I missing one grace okay so let's just give everybody one more moment to ask any final questions and put it in the chat we can make some time for you you have anything there but I do then just want to talk for a minute about the applied innovation work that I'm doing and what we're experimenting with to create more of these great collaborations like the ones I've had with AI have we're looking at how USA can help make more of these connections between implementing partners this webinar is one of those activities that we're doing to create more demand for connections but we're also doing some matchmaking as well so Jeremy for example has sent us a few of their development challenges they're facing on the ground and we're doing some research within our own pool of others to share with him some of the most relevant innovations that are emerging that could help with those challenges he's facing on the ground so we're providing that kind of matchmaking service to implementers at US aid phones that have development challenges and are looking for innovation but then we also do health innovators as well we're trying to connect with implementers from the opposite side so if there are you know if you're an innovator and there is an implementer you're interested in getting to know we're building a relationship feel free to reach out to me and I think I asked Joe to share our contact information of all the panelists with everybody who joined us today so that if you have any follow-up questions you can do that and feel free to ask me that as well and with that I don't think we have any more questions Jose I'm just waiting for Joe to confirm that there's no more questions he's received I did just get an update this morning from another innovator that worked with AUSA project the innovation in Asia innovation which is the weather prediction model that can be used by farmers in the tropics to better predict when rains will be coming I may be working with a project in Mali and Burkina Faso project that's a USA funded project and an implementer who's already just as in Nizam situation was already working with thousands of smallholder farmers and we're able to very easily get that solution into the hands of farmers to test it and this current growing season the farmers have been really happy with it and are likely to you know be in a position to continue purchasing that innovation after the project so it's another great example of a project that was able to get into innovation to to market scale it up actually create some demand and some consumers that are willing to pay for that service after the end of the project so just another great example that's very being that we're tracking if any of you all also have examples of where you've worked with USA programs or implementing partners we'd love to hear about it please let us know but with that we don't have any more questions so we'll let you all go early we really appreciate everybody's time thank you so much to our panelists Suzanne Jeremy and grace make Jo for organizing everything we hope you all have a great day and please contact us weaker than a follow-up questions at all thank you so much