UNFPA Equalizer Challenge 2025: Scaling Women’s Health Innovations

UNFPA, in collaboration with MIT Solve, IE University, and Women of Wearables, has formally launched the Equalizer Challenge 2025: Scaling Women’s Health Innovations. This world innovation problem is designed to establish, fund, and help women-led social enterprises which can be able to scale up impactful options in girls’s well being.

Backed by the Governments of Germany and Luxembourg via the UNFPA Equalizer Accelerator Fund, this initiative supplies catalytic, equity-free funding and 6 months of mentorship and capacity-building to assist scale improvements that shut the well being hole for ladies and ladies.

Why This Challenge Matters

Despite accounting for half the worldwide inhabitants, girls’s well being points stay critically underfunded. According to the World Health Organization, each minute, not less than two girls die from breast or cervical most cancers or pregnancy-related problems. Almost 800 girls die each day from preventable being pregnant and childbirth-related causes, with the overwhelming majority of deaths occurring in low- and middle-income international locations.

Only 1% of world well being R&D funding is allotted to female-specific circumstances past oncology, and a mere 0.2% is directed towards sexual and reproductive well being in growing international locations. These disparities underline the urgency for inclusive innovation that prioritizes the well being of girls, particularly in underserved areas.

What the Challenge Offers

Selected winners will obtain:

• Up to $20,000 in equity-free catalytic funding.

• A six-month innovation help programme from May to December 2025.

• Biweekly teaching, mentorship, and professional steering.

• Inclusion in world well being networks and publicity to potential buyers.

• Access to networking alternatives with peer innovators and main companions within the girls’s well being house.

This help is designed to make sure that collaborating ventures are well-positioned to scale successfully and sustainably, whereas sustaining a powerful deal with equitable affect.

Who Should Apply?

Eligible candidates should:

• Be women-led social enterprises, startups, nonprofits, or hybrid fashions.

• Be registered and working in a UNFPA programme nation.

• Have a minimal viable product (MVP) and proof of possession.

• Submit their application in English and decide to collaborating within the full programme.

• Serve communities with restricted entry to important well being providers.

Enterprises working in areas equivalent to cervical most cancers screening, menopause care, breast most cancers detection, or infertility remedy are notably inspired to apply, particularly these with sturdy enterprise fashions and a path to market or public sector integration.

Key Evaluation Criteria

Applications can be assessed in two phases: an preliminary screening and a panel interview. The choice can be primarily based on:

• Innovation and relevance to girls’s well being.

• Evidence of affect and measurable outcomes.

• Scalability and a sustainable enterprise mannequin.

• Inclusivity and community-centered design.

• Clear potential to remodel girls’s well being in resource-limited settings.

Timeline

• Call for Submissions: April 9 – May 4, 2025

• Winners Announced: June 2025

• Programme Duration: June – November 2025

How to Apply

Apply on-line earlier than May 4, 2025, to be thought-about for this chance.
Apply here

Contact

For questions or cheap lodging, e-mail: equalizer.problem@unfpa.org

For extra data go to the official website.

The Equalizer Challenge is greater than only a funding alternative—it’s a platform for change. It represents a dedication to advancing gender fairness in well being innovation and making certain that women-led options obtain the popularity and sources they deserve.

If you might be an innovator trying to amplify your affect and scale your girls’s well being answer, now’s the time to behave. Submit your application and turn out to be part of a worldwide motion that’s reshaping the way forward for care.

For extra youth-focused funding and innovation alternatives, go to the Opportunities for youth web site.

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