12 February 2010

The UK White paper on international development outlines DFID’s approach to working with civil society, including a commitment to help community groups support small-scale, innovative work. To this end, the Development Innovation Fund (DIF) has been launched and aims to provide grants to small organisations involved in providing specific small-scale, one-off support that directly targets poverty in the developing world, and includes a significant development awareness component in the UK. The Fund supports projects which demonstrate that they will make a positive impact on the lives of poor people in the developing world. All projects must show how lessons learnt will be used to raise public awareness in the UK of international development issues. The DIF has a budget of £7m for an initial period of 16 months.

LTS’ role is to manage the entire Development Innovation Fund process from inviting and guiding applications, through appraising and assessing applications, managing budgets and distributing grants, and on to evaluating funded projects and reporting to DFID on delivery of the Fund.