NOTICE The USAID Mission in Central Asia invites all eligible organizations with experience in carrying out activities to promote good governance and support civil society capacity building to attend a BidderÂ’s Teleconference related to a competitive funding opportunity - the USAID Governance Support

credit: John Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Department of Economics

Program in Turkmenistan.

USAID will present a brief overview of the program.

For more information about this funding opportunity, please visit www.grants.gov and search for “Governance Support Program” then click on Funding Opportunity “RFA-176-15-000001” at the top of the page, then click on the "Full Announcement" tab at the top to download a copy of the RFA.

The teleconference will be held on Wednesday, January 21, 2015, from 9:00 am - 10:00 am EST.

Interested organizations must pre-register and are limited to registering a maximum of two people per organization to participate on the call.

Please register by sending the organizationÂ’s name, name(s) of attendees, email address and telephone number to zkoxalova@usaid.gov and nvirt@usaid.gov by Monday, January 19, 2015, 9 pm EST.

All organizations that have pre-registered will receive an email with the call-in information.

The purpose of this proposed four-year activity titled “Governance Support Program” (GSP) is to strengthen the accountability, effectiveness and transparency of governance in Turkmenistan.

This will be achieved by implementing activities that will actively work in TurkmenistanÂ’s priority areas to introduce theoretical and practical fundamentals of good governance in accordance with best international practices primarily to executive branch civil servants and secondarily to legislative branch civil servants.

Further, activities must be designed to increase transparency and incorporate more effective public sector dialogue with civil society, since accountability mechanisms cannot work if there is an informational imbalance between the supply and demand sides of the public service delivery equation.

Specifically, USAID is seeking to support achievement of the following objectives:
1.

Improved Public Administration of Government of Turkmenistan (GOTX) Institutions 2.

Strengthened Policy Development and Lawmaking Processes The GSP will directly support Intermediate Results (IR) 3. 1 and 3. 2 under the USAID/CA Regional Development Cooperation Strategy (RDCS) Objective 3, “More Effective and Inclusive Governance Institutions that Serve the Public Good.”As government institutions clarify their roles and the respective services they offer to the general public, including civil society and private sector enterprises, the achievement of good governance and other development goals in education, economic growth, and health among others become increasingly realistic.

This program sets the foundation not only for good governance, but also for broader achievement of development goals across various disciplines.