Innovation Challenge Fund

In August 2007 RIU launched the Innovation Challenge Fund (ICF) in Asia, calling for proposals from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Vietnam. The Fund aimed to get promising research (particularly research funded by DFID) put into action to lessen poverty. Projects waimed to significantly up-and out-scale technologies, practices and policies generated by DFID pro-poor research.

The ICF Asia funded the following projects in 2008-2011:

Bangladesh

• Rat management for rural communities
  Led by Association for Integrated Development - Comilla (AID-Comilla)
  Developing and implementing ecologically based methods for communities to control rats
• Integrated floodplain management
  Led by Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA)
  Enhancing water management and improving the productivity of fisheries and agriculture in flood plains
• Promoting sustainable coastal aquaculture in Bangladesh (ProSCAB)
  Led by Bangladesh Fisheries Research Forum (BFRF)
  Promoting and improving low-cost ways to produce, store and market nonconventional marine products, specifically mud crabs, molluscs and seaweed
• Enhancing the impact of decentralised (fish) seed production
  Led by Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Services (RDRS)
  Spreading proven ways of producing fish seed in rice paddies and putting fish farming within reach of the poor

Cambodia

• Linking farmers with structured markets for rural prosperity
  Promoting new ways of marketing fresh fruit and vegetables in Nepal and Cambodia, and pork in Vietnam.

India

• Coalition to diversify income through underused crops (CODI)
  Led by International Centre for Underutilised Crops (ICUC) - also in Vietnam
  Promoting cultivation and marketing of underused crops in rural communities in India and Vietnam.
• Improving livelihoods in South Asia through sustained access to new technologies in rainfed agriculture
  Spreading rice and legume varieties produced by client-oriented breeding and changing seed policies to encourage spread of new varieties to poor farmers
• Promoting sustainable livelihood development
  Encouraging self-help groups, particularly women, to save very small amounts to build capital and stimulate demand for financial insurance and agricultural services
• Knowledge to action: enhancing traditional dairy value chains (RIU involvement ceased in April 2010)
  Creating a demand for quality locally-produced fresh milk and the capacity to supply it
• Poverty alleviation through rice innovation systems (RIU involvement ceased in April 2010)
  Scaling up direct-seeded rice to improve the productivity of the rice-wheat system in the Indo-Gangetic plains

Nepal

• New seed from client-oriented methods
  Setting up community enterprises to trade seed of new varieties of rice that were developed by working with farmers, processors and consumers
• Poverty reduction through crop intensification in rice
  Promoting double cropping - growing a legume crop after the main rice harvest - to raise productivity and help reduce rural poverty
• Linking farmers with structured markets for rural prosperity
  Promoting new ways of marketing fresh fruit and vegetables in Nepal and Cambodia, and pork in Vietnam
• Reducing poverty through innovation system in forestry
  Promoting community management of forests by developing forest user groups, making better use of forest products and helping communities take part in processes for reforming forest policies

Vietnam

• Linking farmers with structured markets for rural prosperity
  Promoting new ways of marketing fresh fruit and vegetables in Nepal and Cambodia, and pork in Vietnam
• Coalition to diversify income through underused crops (CODI)
  Led by International Centre for Underutilised Crops (ICUC) - also in India
• Promoting sustainable livelihood development
  Led by GY Associates Ltd
• Linking farmers with markets for rural prosperity
  Led by International Development Enterprises (IDE)
• Reducing poverty through innovation systems in forestry projects
  Led by Forest Action