In partnership with the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and with financial support from Innovation Norway, UN Women is implementing a Humanitarian Innovation Programme, which aims at tackling the challenge of leveraging the potential of mobile technologies and other digital technologies to enhance the resilience to disasters of rural women in Haiti, Liberia, Malawi, Mali and Senegal by improving their access to both disaster risk reduction and risk transfer and financing mechanisms.

UNCDF makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

UN Women is mandated with gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, it was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide. UN Women supports UN Member States set and implement global standards for achieving gender equality and coordinates gender within the United Nations.

To strengthen rural women’s resilience to disaster through innovative solutions, UN Women in partnership with UNCDF is organising this request for application to identify inclusive, high-impact solutions that offer an opportunity to accelerate the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for the people, particularly the rural women, of the following 5 countries: Haiti, Malawi, Liberia, Mali, and Senegal.

Candidates can apply for the following two areas of intervention:
1. Digital solutions for disaster risk reduction
2. Digital solutions for disaster risk transfer and financing

The applicants can be based anywhere globally, however the operations of the applicant’s organizations should target women smallholder farmers in the project countries, that is, Senegal, Mali, Liberia, Malawi, and Haiti.

UNCDF and UN Women will provide up to USD 50,000 in grant per selected applicant or consortium for each project country, as well as technical assistance (which can involve support for product design, for business model studies and assistance with capacity building).

Selected applicants will be signing a Performance-Based Agreement (PBA) with UNCDF.

Selected applicants will be expected to fund at least twenty percent (20%) of the total project cost in cash (for costs such technical resources, staff, and operational expenses).

The initial deadline for submissions is October 11, 2021, 23:59 EDT Time.

However, UNCDF invites you to log into the RFA platform to check if this date has not been extended.

Go to UNCDF e-investment platform to apply:

CLICK HERE TO APPLY

Inquiries to this request for applications may be submitted by email to uncdf.rfa@uncdf.org

More information? Register for our virtual introductory meeting which will take place on Sep 30, 2021, 02:00 PM in Universal Time UTC:

https://undp.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUsfuCsqDstH9VnAdROKrTpJj_vCIFGAkMu