Expressions of Interest: Strengthen Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology Services

ATscale is hosted by UNOPS, the United Nations Office for Project Services. UNOPS’s mission is to help people build better lives and countries to achieve peace and sustainable development, by expanding the ability of the United Nations, governments, and other partners to manage projects, infrastructure, and procurement operations sustainably and efficiently in some of the world’s most challenging environments. UNOPS supports more than US$1 billion worth of development projects every year.

Aims of ATscale Funding for Country Support

• ATscale seeks to provide catalytic funding to LMICs to sustainably increase access to AT for those in need. ATscale envisions achieving this through multi-sectoral partnerships at the country level, led by governments and including key in-country partners (including organisations of persons with disabilities and users of rehabilitation services and AT).
• The ATscale funding supports comprehensive and integrated national AT programmes and activities. Country funding support can span any (one or multiple) functional difficulties (vision, hearing, mobility, cognitive, and self-care) and associated assistive products and services.

Purpose

• This document calls for Expressions of Interest (EOIs) from eligible LMICs in Latin America for funding from ATscale, focused on strengthening rehabilitation and AT systems and services for people with mobility-related injuries and disabilities. The fund is intended to support government-led programmes or interventions on rehabilitation and AT systems and services to improve the lives of affected populations, including conflict-affected people in this region.

Scope of Funding

• ATscale plans to partner with 2-3 LMIC countries in post-conflict settings 1 across the region by providing them with grants ranging from $0.5 million to $1.0 million per country per year. The annual budget is subject to funding availability and performance of the country over the period, and this may lead to revision of the initial allocations to the countries. Each grant will be initially for two or three years (2024-2027) with the ambition of long-term partnerships with national governments.
• In accordance with this approach, the key areas covered under the overall scope of the funding that will be supported in each country are: 1) scaling up access to rehabilitation and AT services for people with mobility-related injuries and disabilities, and 2) strengthening the AT ecosystem by creating a favourable environment for wider AT sector development.
  • Scaling up access to rehabilitation and AT services for people with mobility-related injuries and disabilities: 85 per cent to 90 per cent of the grant: The funding focuses on supporting the effective expansion of rehabilitation interventions and access to AT services into government-led programmes. Approaches that are government-owned; based on proven models; integrated into public health, social, education, labour, and employment systems, and so on; and that leverage the strengths of both the public and private sectors will be seen favourably.
  • Strengthening the AT ecosystem by creating a favourable environment for the AT sector at the national level: 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the grant: The funding is also intended to build a conducive environment in the selected countries for wider AT ecosystem strengthening. Therefore, a small part of the grant can also go towards creating a favourable environment in the country through key strategic activities focused on the wider AT ecosystem.

Eligibility

• Eligible LMI countries for this Call are El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Colombia.
• The responses should be signed and submitted by an individual with a sufficient level of authority in the government.
• Only the LMICs from the Latin America and Caribbean Region are eligible to apply for this EOI.
• At the country level, the concerned interventions or programmes could take place in working areas such as health, education, non-communicable diseases, rehabilitation, disability programmes, standalone physical rehabilitation programmes, social welfare, and labour, or others, and could vary from country to country.

For more information, visit UNOPS.