News — 15 April, 2021

OMDTZ Community Impact Microgrants Call — 2021

Open Map Development Tanzania is looking for at least eight Tanzanian OSM communities to receive microgrants. Applications are due by 5 May 2021.

Click here If you would like to submit your application in Swahili.

Ukihitaji kuwasilisha maombi kwa lugha ya kiswahili bofya hapa.

Update: Applications have been extended until 31st May 2021.

OpenMap Development Tanzania (OMDTZ), with support from the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)‘s Audacious Project, is aiming to support OpenStreetMap (OSM) communities across Tanzania through the OMDTZ Community Impact Microgrants. This is a support program for local communities in Tanzania to leverage OSM data and tools and help them to solve local challenges. OMDTZ is seeking to support and fund projects and communities that foster flexibility, local context, and practical ideas at the grassroots level, and aim to solve communities’ problems through mapping.

The microgrants program is aiming to provide grants between 5,750,000–11,500,000/= Tanzanian shillings to at least eight (8) OSM communities across Tanzania with practical ideas on how OSM data and mapping will support their local communities in solving specific challenges and bringing sustainable solutions.

The purpose of these microgrants is to expand Tanzania’s local community involvement in open mapping and support them with the necessary resources they need to grow. The microgrant also hopes to contribute to the solving of the granular challenges that affect their daily lives. OMDTZ expects that this will in turn lead to development in socio-economic activities and humanitarian responses that rely on the availability of open datasets.

The projects submitted must align with the following principles:

• Clear and concise project goals: successful applications will clearly define their project goals, list of activities, the timeline and process of how each activity will be carried out, communities to be involved, and the long-term vision of the project outcome.

• Ownership: successful applications will have to show how the community/organization will own the output and how they will use it to solve the challenges they face. They will define clearly who is in need of the data or the training, and why. Priority will be given to projects that will focus mostly on solving and uncovering local community problems and challenges.

• Inclusion i.e. gender consideration, the inclusion of youths and marginalized groups: priority will be given to proposals that include women and children in their training of open tools and capacity-building activities. The aim is to expand the number of women and other marginalized groups to learn and use different tools to boost their careers and involvement in solving community challenges.

• Open knowledge evolution: priority will be given to projects that aim to expand to peripheral regions of the country and expose them to open tools and OSM. Priority will also be given to proposals that plan to create new OSM communities that might further contribute to the growth of OSM in different regions of Tanzania.

• **Cooperation: **priority will be given to projects that will work together or form an alliance with the local government, private sector, or local community institutions, and create champions who will carry the work forward beyond the grant period with adequate tech knowledge and data.

Information on eligibility can be found on the information document here and the Swahili version can be found here.

How to Apply?

To submit your application, you must fill this form with all the proposal details and upload the required documents. Templates for the project plan and budget can be downloaded here and here respectively. All applications will need to carefully consider the five project principles listed above.

To make sure all applications are inclusive and avoid language barriers, we will accept applications in Swahili; the submission form in Swahili is found here, and the project plan and budget templates can be found here and here. If you need any help to go through the application, please contact asha.mustapha@hotosm.org.

All applications should be submitted no later than 31 May 2021.

Mentoring

Mentoring will be available to all applicants for one (1) month before submission, including support in project ideation, project planning, budget creation, and advice on stakeholder engagement. We provide mentorship to all applicants to support communities who have great project ideas but are not able to present their ideas in a good write-up for funding.

All interested applicants are mandatorily required to request a mentor to help them through the entire application process. You can ask for mentorship by sending your request email to asha.mustapha@hotosm.org with the title of your project,

Note: Only applications within Tanzania (mainland and Zanzibar) will be accepted. Applications from outside Tanzania will not be accepted.\