Small grants awarded through a competitive process led to outsized results, which more than compensated for the increased complexity of administering many small grants. There was a good degree of opposition to the use of small grants for the Strengthening Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) Provider Practice component during design. However, the pool of small grant applications resulted in so many high-quality proposals that the project (1) increased the maximum grant amount in the second round from $10,000 to $25,000 and (2) added a third round to accommodate grants. According to some stakeholders, an even larger maximum grant amount would have been justified. As these grants were strategically chosen to align with planned TVET reforms that were not covered through the existing state budgets and that could be sustained beyond the Compact, they complemented existing policy while filling programmatic gaps that ultimately contributed to a broader TVET reform agenda. While these grants fell short of achieving more ambitious program goals – such as the system-wide adoption of certain practices – there is evidence that the small grants led to key contributions both by specific providers as well as a more robust government discourse of private-sector driven TVET. In the future, MCC should consider using this type of approach to compliment other investments when implementation complexity can be managed (such as by bundling it with other tasks in an already planned contract – as was the case in Georgia).
Lesson Learned