Annual Report: Support of the Urban Policy (SOUP) Project

The project's period of performance consists of the Base Year and four Option Years, with the Base Year covering the period from October 1, 2015, through September 30, 2016. The project's objective is to encourage the adoption and application of an "urban lens" to various phases of the USAID Program Cycle, particularly within the context of important Congressional Earmarks for initiatives such as Global Climate Change, Global Health Initiative, and Feed the Future. The SOUP Project entails training programs, urban analyses, evaluations of related USAID programs, as well as knowledge management and communications products. The project is delivered through an integrated systems approach, with a series of inter-related activities to support USAID's Urban Team in demonstrating the importance of sustainable urban service delivery in key development sectors such as climate change, health, education, food security, and economic growth. The project encourages buy-in from Agency staff, technical and regional bureaus, country missions, collaborating donors, and host country partners for the successful implementation of USAID's Urban Policy. The ECODIT Consortium, led by ECODIT as the prime contractor, consists of International City/Country Management Association (ICMA) as the major subcontractor, and several Resource Partners (RPs) including ICF International, Macfadden and Associates, AECOM, Mott MacDonald, Global Communities, World Learning, IMC Worldwide, Development Transformations, and the World Resources Institute. The team is led by Ms. Bonnie Walter as Chief of Party (COP)/Senior Urban Training Manager (UTM/PM) for the Base Year, with Mr. Steve Anlian serving as ECODIT's Home Office (HO) Engagement Manager before assuming the COP role for Option Year 1. Throughout the one-year reporting period, ECODIT and ICMA held ongoing in-person and telephone meetings with the USAID Contracting Officer's Representatives (CORs), and made significant progress on various tasks and deliverables. The project management team successfully overhauled the USAID Urban Website and planned the training event on "Integration and Evidence for Urban Programming." ICMA proposed a revised Level of Effort (LOE) allocation that reassigned LOE from unused line items to other personnel, and added resources to the website design line item to effectively overhaul the existing Making Cities Work (MCW) website. Task A: Training was a key component of the SOUP Project, with the second quarter of the Base Year focusing on integration projects and an urban research agenda, and the use of research and evaluation for decision-making in programming. In the third quarter, ECODIT developed the workshop agenda in collaboration with the COR, identified detailed workshop learning objectives, contracted with five expert consultants to deliver presentations on specific workshop topics, and liaised with USAID presenters. The training event was planned for June 2016, but the exact date is not specified in the report. The SOUP Project has made significant progress in its first year, with a strong team in place and a clear understanding of the project's objectives and deliverables. The project's success will depend on continued collaboration and coordination among the project team, USAID, and other stakeholders, as well as the effective implementation of the project's activities and deliverables.