Quarterly Status Report: Support of the Urban Policy (SOUP) Project

The project's period of performance consists of the Base Year (October 1, 2015, through September 30, 2016) and four Option Years, with Option Year Two covering the period from October 1, 2017, to September 30, 2018. The SOUP Project entails training programs, urban analyses, evaluations of related USAID programs, as well as knowledge management and communications products. The project encourages buy-in from Agency staff and technical and regional bureaus and country missions, as well as from collaborating donors and host country partners, for the successful implementation of USAID's Urban Policy. The ECODIT Consortium, led by ECODIT LLC, is the prime contractor for the SOUP Project. The consortium includes International City/County Management Association (ICMA) as the major subcontractor and several Resource Partners (RPs) who support discrete activities during the project's implementation. The team is led by Mr. Steve Anlian, Chief of Party (COP)/Senior Urban Training Manager, and Ms. Ariane LeClerq, ECODIT's Home Office Project Manager (HOPM). During the reporting period, the SOUP Project team held ongoing meetings with the USAID Contracting Officer's Representative (COR) and the USAID Activity Manager for Tasks A, C, and D. Task A, Training, involved the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on urban topics, including urban food security. However, due to resource reallocation, the project received no additional fund obligation, and USAID requested ECODIT to evaluate the remaining activities under this Task and make a recommendation to USAID. The SOUP Project team continued to maintain the UrbanLinks website and Resources Library, which received 8,611 page views from 3,301 unique users during the quarter. Seventeen posts were added to the site, including media scans, blogs, and announcements. A new Urban Champion blog was completed and posted in April, and another is currently awaiting clearance. Four new resources were added to the Resources Library, and two additional resources are currently awaiting approval to be added to the Library. The project's implementation issues and problems, and approaches being taken to address them, are discussed in Section III of this report. Upcoming activities for the next quarter are outlined in Section IV, and an update of contract Level of Effort (LOE) and budget status is provided in Section V.