Applications call for UNICEF Innovation Fund 2020. The UNICEF Innovation Fund in partnership with the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children and Giga is looking to make up to $100k equity-free investments to provide early-stage (seed) finance to for-profit technology start-ups that have the potential to benefit humanity.

Background

This UNICEF Innovation Fund Call for Applications is in partnership with the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children and Giga. End Violence is a technical partner and will provide programmatic expertise for the sourcing, selection and portfolio management of this cohort. End Violence will stay involved during the investment period and enable access to key networks across the Child Online Protection ecosystem.

Benefits 

• All companies of the portfolio receive tailored support for product development, building a business model, and user testing based on their own needs assessment. Startups also gain access to the UNICEF Ventures team’s tech expertise, networks and platforms to help them reach the stage where they can provide that their solutions work and tap into larger funding sources.
• They provide up to $100K equity-free funding to open source frontier tech solutions showing promising results. The funding is intended for prototype testing and validation, and to get the solution to a stage where the company has proof that the solution and the business model work. This includes being able to generate data to show impact, usability and strategy.
• The Fund provides access to a tailored one-to-one mentoring progam with the Innovation Fund’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence Mentors, based on the startup’s unique needs assessment. This program takes place over 4-5 months and concentrates on topics such as value proposition, competition map, skateholder map, sales and activities, pricing and business models, growth plan, financial projecions, and business and impact focused metrics.

Who can enter?

UNICEF is currently looking to invest in companies that are using machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain or extended reality (virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR)) technologies to build software solutions that respond to the four broad categories of digital risks to children: Content, Contact, Conduct and Contract Risks.

• Content Risks: Exposure to harmful or age-inappropriate content, such as pornography, child sexual abuse material, hate speech and extremism, discriminatory or hateful content, disinformation, online games, gambling, content that endorses risky or unhealthy behaviours and violent content which may be upsetting or show criminal activity.
• Contact Risks: Harmful interactions with another human including child sexual abuse and exploitation including grooming, stalking and sexual extortion, online bullying, and blackmail and harassment.
• Conduct Risks: Harmful exchanges, such as bullying, stalking, sharing of self-generated sexual content (sexting), revenge porn, data misuse, financial abuse, and other forms of inappropriate behavior.
• Contract Risks: Exposure to inappropriate contractual relationships, children’s consent online, embedded marketing as well as violation and misuse of personal data such as hacking, fraud and theft.

Full information here