As a five-year agreement between Presbyterian World Service and Development and the Canadian International Development Agency drew toward its close, staff at both agencies were working to extend the current funding for another six months.
In a Feb. 23 news release, the church’s relief and development arm reported that a new five-year agreement submitted to CIDA in September 2010 had been rejected in December. The new proposal had requested a 10 per cent increase in funding, and was meant to begin when the previous agreement ended on April 1, 2011.
As the Record went to press, PWS&D staff were at work on a new funding proposal to be submitted at the end of March. If approved, the new program would begin Oct. 1.
Although no written agreements were in place at press time, Guy Smagghe, PWS&D’s government relations officer, said he was “very confident” that CIDA would fund a six-month extension of their current program. If the extension is provided and the new proposal is accepted, no funding gap will occur. “They approached us,” he noted. “I think that reflects positively on our track record.”
For the past five years, PWS&D received $458,000 from CIDA each year for programs in El Salvador, Nicaragua, India, Malawi and Tanzania.
A comprehensive assessment of PWS&D completed by CIDA in June 2010 presented a positive report of the work and administration of the church’s agency, and concluded that the initiatives it supports are “consistent with CIDA’s priorities of poverty reduction and sustainable development.”
CIDA has changed its proposal process, PWS&D director Ken Kim told the Life and Mission Agency in March. “CIDA, for many years, has worked with us as a partner.” It means that when we discussed what our programs were, there was a back and forth. So we presented a proposal and they had questions; we responded to those questions. The new call for proposals doesn’t allow for that. There’s a deadline, and everybody submits according to the criteria published on the CIDA website. They will tell you right away if you don’t meet those criteria; there’s a minimum entry point. After that, they have four or five months and they will tell you yes or no.
“In December we received a message from CIDA informing us that they would not be ‘retaining our proposal for further consideration.'”
On its website CIDA states the new process “will streamline the application process and reduce the administrative burden for project applications, leaving more money for real development work on the ground.”
According to PWS&D’s year-end report, contributions from individuals and congregations totaled $4.1 million in 2010, with more than $1.6 million donated in response to the Haiti earthquake. As the Record went to print, PWS&D had issued a Spring Challenge to congregations, hoping to raise $500,000 to help reduce hunger.
