Peace & Recovery Initiative | Call for Proposals

IPA's Peace & Recovery Initiative (PRI), funded by UK International Development, supports rigorous impact evaluations, pilots, exploratory studies, evidence use and policy outreach support, and infrastructure and public goods projects to inform policies and programs related to the prevention of, responses to, and recovery from most forms of social and political violence as well as humanitarian emergencies, including:

• International and civil wars
• State-supported violence and repression, from mass killings to police brutality
• Electoral violence
• Riots, protests, strikes, and other collective action
• Intergroup violence, including ethnic and sectarian violence
• Terrorism and violent extremism
• “Recovery” responses after conflict or crises, including natural disasters

Supported projects will contribute to innovation and generalizable learning on program effectiveness, identify the mechanisms underpinning programming, and address potential barriers to impact. Priority areas of research include:

• Understanding and preventing individual-level participation in violence
• Understanding, combating, and reintegrating armed groups
• Addressing prejudice and building horizontal social cohesion
• Strengthening household and community resilience
• Building institutions, resolving disputes, and delivering justice
• Addressing root causes and preventing future crises

PRI’s tenth call for proposals is now open. Required expressions of interest are due on November 14, 2025, and proposals are due on January 16, 2026. Please reach out to peace@poverty-action.org with any questions. Learn more here.
 

Soft Skills Research Fund | Curated Portfolio of Research Projects (ongoing) and Competitive Request for Proposals

IPA has announced new funding for research on soft skills for entrepreneurship and workforce development (read the announcement). Through this funding, IPA aims to support research in low- and middle-income countries that examines the relationship between soft skills and employment-related outcomes. Priority will be given to projects that respond to existing evidence gaps, incorporate a common framework for measuring soft skills and economic outcomes, and generate implementation-relevant evidence. For more information on research priorities, the definition of soft skills, outcomes of interest, and sample research questions, see the joint IPA-J-PAL research agenda.

IPA will source research projects through two key approaches: 1) a competitive open call for proposals, to be launched in fall 2025 (details forthcoming); and 2) a curated portfolio of full-scale research projects.

For the curated portfolio, research projects will be selected on an ongoing, rolling basis and leverage IPA’s long-standing work in this area and our strong relationships with implementers and researchers.

These projects will be co-designed with leading implementers and researchers, focusing on:

• Developing research questions
• Collecting and analyzing implementation data
• Thoughtful use of soft-skills measurement

Projects will be selected on a rolling basis by an internal committee, prioritizing:

• Alignment with the research agenda
• Potential for policy impact
• Collaboration with interdisciplinary teams that are flexible, knowledgeable, and strategic in using soft-skills measures

For the Request for Proposals (RFP), IPA opened the call in early October. Interested teams must first submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) by November 14, 2025.

EOIs will be reviewed, and selected applicants will receive feedback and be invited to the next stage: submission of a full proposal and budget. Research teams will be notified of their EOI status by December 15, 2025, and full proposals will be due by January 30, 2026.

Projects will be selected by a committee of internal and external experts, with priority given to proposals that demonstrate:

• Strong alignment with the research agenda
• Clear potential for policy impact
• Consistency with a shared skills framework to support cross-study learning
• Collaboration with interdisciplinary teams that are flexible, knowledgeable, and strategic in applying soft-skills measures
• Collection of cost data to inform scalability and cost-effectiveness analyses

Please contact epsd@poverty-action.org for more information.