Current Activities

GEPT Rapid Response funds provide USAID and CEPPS the ability to quickly respond to unanticipated events posed by emerging challenges and opportunities with targeted programming. The international development community faces a set of demands, often involving multiple evolving crises, elections, and transitions. To support USAID in meeting this challenge, CEPPS draws from its broad geographic presence and deep roster of experts – cultivated from around the globe over decades of programming – to mobilize leading national and international DRG expertise to scale during critical windows of opportunity. CEPPS has leveraged field offices, national staff, and relationships with elected government officials, electoral management bodies, local and regional CSOs, political party leadership and global policy makers to implement more than a dozen rapid response activities under the GEPT award to date. Given that the COVID-19 pandemic is not only a health and economic emergency but also a DRG threat that could undermine or collapse fragile democracies, maintaining USAID’s ability to provide critically needed programmatic responses via GEPT Rapid Response funding remains more important and timely than ever.

Read More:
CEPPS COVID-19 White-Paper-April-2020.pdf

Under the GEPT mechanism, CEPPS uses subgrants to help strengthen the capacity and role of local and regional organizations engaged  in support of elections and political transitions.  These regional and global networks provide a vital tool for building sustainable peer-to-peer support, and can offer an additional point of leverage for country-level Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG) reforms.

The GEPT mechanism currently supports two subgrants programs; one supporting Inclusion and one supporting Networking and Communities of Practice. The Inclusion subgrants focus on promoting the role of marginalized communities in electoral processes. The Networking and Communities of Practice subgrants focus on establishing networks and communities of practice on key democracy and governance issues.

CEPPS integrates capacity development into the sub-grant process through tailored technical assistance. CEPPS’ approach to sub-granting as a capacity-building intervention helps local and regional organizations on their journey to self-reliance by improving their ability to implement programs, interact with donors, report programmatic results and manage money. As a result, sub-recipients can develop sustainable operational capacity and democratic organizational cultures built on fundamental principles of ethics, accountability, inclusion and responsibility.