UNICEF Climate Innovation Challenge

UNICEF is launching a call for solutions from emerging markets in collaboration with India Health Fund (IHF), and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). To maximize impact, UNICEF will foster collaboration between early-stage frontier tech ventures and help scale proven climate adaptation solutions. This dual track approach seeks to drive impact and provide long-term sustainability.

We also invite value-aligned partners to support innovation challenges, design sprints and deliver strategic technical assistance to build greater equity and trust across technological solutions.

Through this challenge, we seek to:

• conduct a market mapping of child-centric climate innovators operating across emerging markets
• create capacity by offering mentorship and technical assistance from UNICEF Venture Fund experts to selected start-ups, enhancing their investment readiness and potential for future funding.

This will comprise:

• 10 hours of technical mentoring consisting of open source, business development, frontier technology, software development and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mentorship
• additional support to understand and navigate the UNICEF Venture Fund sourcing and selection process
• highlight investable solutions that demonstrate public good and market opportunity

The UNICEF Venture Fund is particularly seeking solutions that:

• address challenges to accelerate results for children
• are optimized for low-resource environments (e.g., low connectivity or limited mobile access)
• focus on reducing, rather than widening, inequalities, delivering results for diverse users and communities
• can deliver in multiple languages, including local and less used languages