UNICEF Innovation Fund: Open source technology solutions for children

UNICEF invites expressions of interest to receive funding from the UNICEF Innovation Fund (IF). The Fund provides investment-style funding for early-stage, open source technology solutions that address the most pressing challenges faced by children and young people. The core motivation of the IF 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.

Expressions of interest are invited from companies registered in UNICEF’s programme countries. Interested companies must meet the criteria required to be eligible for funding.

The Fund does not help large companies to create new business lines. UNICEF will support companies registered in these markets in UNICEF’s programme countries- with a small amount of money to move solutions to the stage where these are proven to be workable and can be implemented.

The Innovation Fund does not take equity, instead UNICEF requires that all code, content or hardware developed and tested be open source and be publicly available. The Innovation Fund provides money, technical support and a network to help such companies grow. Funded projects will be connected to other similar early-stage projects in other countries, which should enable projects to develop faster and better.

For further details, see the attached Procurement Notice:

Request for Expression of Interest Jan2018.pdf

FAQ’s – Expression of Interest.pdf

List-of-Programme-Countries-1.pdf