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Providing funding & support to frontier technology solutions for children
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.
If you are a start-up using machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain or extended reality, registered in one of UNICEF’s program countries, and have a working, open-source prototype (or you are willing to make it open-source) showing promising results, the UNICEF Innovation Fund is looking for you.
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:
Read the full Request for Expressions of Interest (REOI) document here.
Application Deadline: 20 December 2020
We are 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.
Apply now if your solution addresses any of the below:
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
Are you building tools and models to make online content, social media and gaming platforms and other services safe for children? Or are you using frontier technologies to tackle inappropriate content?
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
Are you building platforms and tools to prevent online child abuse and exploitation? Or are you generating insights to assess and mitigate the threats and harms in digital environments?
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
Are you leveraging existing and new technologies to educate children and young people about digital risks awareness, and appropriate and safe behaviors in digital environments?
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
Are you creating tools and platforms leveraging new technologies to protect children’s and other data online? Or are you identifying and blocking inappropriate commercial platforms?
With over 4 billion people (71% of whom are 15-24 year olds) and 1 in 3 children connected to the internet, children’s lives are being shaped behind a screen. COVID-19-related measures such as nation-wide lockdowns have prompted widespread school closures and physical distancing measures, making online platforms and communities essential to maintaining a sense of normalcy. Children and their families have been turning to digital solutions more than ever to support children’s learning, socialization and play. Efforts are underway to bring connectivity and access to digital solutions to all young people through initiatives like Giga.
While digital solutions provide huge opportunities, these same tools may also increase children’s exposure to online risks and harms. Being online can magnify traditional threats and harms that many children already face offline and can further increase vulnerabilities with online risks also present 24/7/365.
Data suggests that the new reality, imposed by COVID-19 increases the risks to children, posed by online sexual abuse and exploitation, cyberbullying, exposure to potentially harmful content and inappropriate collection, and use and sharing of data. Law enforcement authorities and reporting hotlines have seen a striking increase in the amount of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) being shared online, of which an ever increasing percentage involves self-generated content. While online risks for children have increased, child safeguarding and protection online remain inadequate to support children, their families and education systems to prevent and respond to these risks and harms accordingly. Technological solutions are one crucial element to efficiently respond to the threats of the online environment for children.
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.
Launched in 2016, the Fund is specifically designed to finance early stage, open-source technology that can benefit children. The core motivation of the Innovation Fund is to identify “clusters” or portfolios of initiatives around emerging technology – so that UNICEF can both share markets and also learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children. We invest in solutions clusters around $100 billion industries in frontier technology spaces, such as: blockchain, virtual and augmented reality, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
End Violence is the largest and most diverse public-private coalition focused on accelerating progress towards SDG 16.2: ending all forms of violence against children by 2030. It acts as a global platform for evidence-based advocacy, action and investments. Through Safe Online, End Violence is making investments in organizations designing tools, programs and technology solutions to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA), as well as working with global leaders and organizations to ensure a continued focus on child online safety, placing it high in key global policy debates.
A joint initiative launched by UNICEF and ITU in September 2019 to connect every school to the Internet and every young person to information, opportunity and choice, is supporting the immediate response to COVID19-related measures and their effects on society, as well as looking at how connectivity can create stronger infrastructures of hope and opportunity in the “time after COVID.”