Understanding IDEAL’s Program Improvement Award

About the Webinar

The IDEAL Small Grant Program is soliciting $100,000 Program Improvement Award (PIA) applications from food and nutrition security practitioners for project ideas, achievable within a twelve-month timeframe that will contribute to improved quality of design and implementation of activities targeting vulnerable populations affected by food insecurity. These projects will address a gap in knowledge that is of importance to the larger food and nutrition security implementing partner community.  Successful applications will have the potential to build capacity, within and beyond the implementing organization, and generate significant knowledge related to one or two of IDEAL’s content focus areas and/or the  USAID Office of Food for Peace Learning Agenda. The end products and project results should be accessible and applicable to food and nutrition security implementers working with FFP-target populations.

Please join IDEAL as we dig deeper into the Program Improvement Award (PIA) Request for Applications (RFA), its selection criteria under IDEAL, the two-stage application process, and the quarterly reporting requirements. This webinar will provide participants with information about IDEAL’s content focus areas and review examples of successful Program Improvement Awards from TOPS.  Attendees will have 20 minutes or more to ask questions about the first PIA RFA under IDEAL. 

Presenters

Austen Musso
Austen Musso is the Small Grants Manager with the IDEAL Activity. Prior to joining Save the Children, Austen worked with Vitamin Angels for seven years, most recently as the African Regional Program Manager. He was responsible for overseeing a portfolio of grants and partnerships that reached more than 20 million underserved children and mothers with essential micronutrients. Austen holds an MPH from Boston University and received his BS in Nutritional Science from Pennsylvania State University.  

Diana Picón
Diana Picón is IDEAL’s Resilience and Adaptive Management Senior Specialist. She has 18 years of experience in international development, working on resilience and complex programming, monitoring and evaluation, and public health, both in direct implementation as well as providing technical assistance to governments. She has lived and worked in Latin America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Laura Zilmer
Laura Zilmer is the Research Associate and M&E Specialist on IDEAL. Laura comes most recently from the TOPS Program where she held multiple roles, including Coordinator of the Small Grants Program. Prior to TOPS and IDEAL, Laura served as a Business Development Fellow for Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in South Africa where she supported program development in Southern and East Africa.

Couldn't make the webinar? Watch the recording and access the presentation slides.

Explore the PIA Request for Applications (RFA)