Applications Invited for UNICEF Innovation Fund Grant for Frontier Tech Solutions

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About the Organization

The UNICEF Innovation Fund invests exclusively in open source solutions. The Fund generates value by building open source IP and scalable digital public goods, strengthening communities of problem solvers, and growing solutions that bring results for children and the world.

About the Grant

The UNICEF Venture Fund is looking to make up to US$100K in equity-free investments to provide early-stage (seed) funding to for-profit start-ups developing frontier technology solutions that can positively impact the lives of the world's most vulnerable children and youth. If your product is registered in one of UNICEF’s programme countries, is a working prototype, has demonstrated results, and is (or could be) open-source licensed, we encourage you to apply.

UNICEF’s Innovation Fund invests in early stage, open-source, emerging technology digital public goods with the potential to impact children on a global scale. It also provides product and technology assistance, support with business growth, access to a network of experts and partners to allow for scale and growth. Our ambition is to build successful digital solutions into Global Digital Public Goods, to ensure fair, equitable, and open access to these unique and new tools for human development on a global scale.

The UNICEF Innovation Fund is the first financial vehicle of its kind in the United Nations and enables UNICEF to learn from and to shape markets of emerging technology that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion persons’ needs.

Founded in 2016, the core motivation of the Innovation Fund is to identify "clusters" or portfolios of initiatives around emerging technology - so that UNICEF can both shape markets and also learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children. We invest in digital public goods that can impact the lives of vulnerable populations.

We find these solutions clustered around $100 billion industries in frontier technology spaces, such as: blockchain, drones, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, extended reality and others.

Eligibility

Projects are assessed by UNICEF Innovation Fund team and recommended for funding to the internal board. Companies need to fulfill the following mandatory requirements to be considered for funding:                                          

• Registered as a private company
• Registered in a UNICEF programme country

• Working on open source technology solutions (or willing to be open source) under the following licenses or their equivalent:
• for software, a BSD license,
• for hardware, a CERN license and
• a CC-BY license for design or content, a CC-BY license
• An existing prototype of the open source solution with promising results from initial pilots
• Solution has the potential to positively impact the lives of the most vulnerable children     
• Generating publicly exposed real-time data that is measurable.

How to Apply

Submission deadline: 28th July 2023  

Apply now

For more information please check the Link

Tags Entrepreneurship Healthcare and Healthtech Innovations and Technology Others