The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have launched the Innovations to Empower Women and Girls Challenge to help scale innovative solutions that can help disrupt inequalities and advance the empowerment of women and girls.
The first-ever Joint Innovation Challenge organized by the UNFPA, the Innovations to Empower Women and Girls Challenge is looking for innovative ideas that support female empowerment, maternal health, gender equality, and reproductive rights.
The Challenge will support women-centered innovations, including those that i) provide affordable and sustainable access to essential reproductive health commodities, services, and information, with a focus on hard-to-reach areas and humanitarian settings, and ii) scale-up prevention and response to gender-based violence and harmful practices.
UNFPA, in partnership with WIPO and ITU, will implement this joint Challenge. The partners will select up to 10 winning proposals from the applying Companies, and provide grants of up to $60,000 per award to position to scale. After the selection of awardees, winning Companies will sign a 9-month contract during which the awardees will fully develop and start implementing their plans to transition to scale, and will receive technical assistance in the focus areas, including intellectual property (IP) management and business modeling.
WIPO will provide IP management support tailored to each of the awardees. This will include lectures, mentorship, and interactive workshops, and will be based on WIPO’s IP diagnostic and IP analytic tools. ITU will provide the Bootcamp for winners, support mentorship, and support scale-up using its ecosystem development, initiatives sustainability, and scale-up frameworks.
Applications are open here until April 15.
