Pour plus d’informations, veuillez visiter le site internet de l’organisme bailleur, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).

IPA invites proposals from researchers and organizations that intend to design and carry out impact evaluations exploring interventions to reduce human trafficking or respond to the needs of human trafficking victims but need some additional time and support to push the research project to the next stage.

The objective of these small grants is to advance early-stage discussion between researchers and implementing organizations to the point where they have viable research project designs and plans that can lead to a full impact evaluation in the future.

These early-stage grants are expected to generate a set of meaningful partnerships and refined evidence that can support applicants to become viable applicants for full-scale studies at a later stage.

The grants are intended to support research costs and not project implementation costs, though modest implementation costs will be considered.

HTRI expects to fund a total of six to nine proposals in this round that cover a range of different activities addressing any or all of the four Ps (prevention, protection, prosecution, partnership). Applications that do not intend to use this seed funding to assess the feasibility of future randomized control trials (RCTs) or other rigorous experimental designs as their methodology for causal inference will NOT be considered for funding.

While quasi-experimental and natural experiment designs will be considered, preference will be given to seed grant applicants that focus on preparing for future randomized evaluations.

In this round, the HTRI will consider proposals that include:

• Small research pilots of promising interventions: These are grants that would fund the cost of a small pilot to assess the feasibility and value of a larger research project. These grants are intended to be the first step of formal research for promising interventions and anti-trafficking activities. Programs with monitoring and evaluation data, administrative data, and/or sound theories of change that indicate promising impact would be a good fit for this grant.
• Seed money for a travel grant or staff time to build on nascent research ideas: These grants are to develop preliminary research ideas and help researchers develop subsequent proposals for pilots or full randomized evaluations. Activities may include travel, relationship development, descriptive analysis, observational analysis, and data development or collection. These grants are primarily meant for junior faculty, PhD students, and other researchers who do not have other sources of funding for travel and exploratory work.
• Small grants for data work using existing sources to examine program impact: These are small grants that will support researchers to use a partner’s administrative data or other existing data sets, conduct desk research to deepen previous research analysis, or create new analysis to help inform research project design and viability. We expect to see applications either explain how existing analysis could be improved or potentially be used to draw additional conclusions. Preference will be given to applicants who chart how their results can influence future research (specifically impact evaluations).

Eligibility Criteria

All researchers must meet the terms of the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons eligibility requirements. For more details, please review the General Terms and Conditions section of the submission guidelines.

Please note that research grants provided by HTRI must focus on one or both forms of trafficking in persons as defined by the Trafficking Victim Protection Act:

• Sex Trafficking – when a trafficker uses force, fraud, or coercion to compel a person to engage in a commercial sex act or when a trafficker causes a child who has not attained 18 years of age to engage in a commercial sex act.
• Forced Labor – when a trafficker recruits, harbors, transports, provides, or obtains a person for labor or services by using force, fraud, or coercion.

All projects must benefit people and communities for lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Please note that project activities and interventions can take place anywhere, but the intended beneficiaries must be from LMICs.

Closing date : before midnight, US Eastern Standard Time, on Friday, March 31, 2023.

Funding : between $10,000 and $50,000

Further information