Call for applications: Award for young girls with innovative initiatives in Information and Communication and Digital Technologies
Background
Information and Communication as well as digital Technologies are major drivers of gender equality and women’s economic empowerment across all sectors. On the other hand, there are risks of digital technologies that contribute to gender inequality in accessing ICT. Cyberbullying and online harassment are becoming common challenges among young females in the digital era.
Young girls and women with improved access to these technologies can benefit from increased employment, business performance, and access to opportunities as well as reduced women’s time spent on unpaid care and domestic work, enabling them to actively participate in the labor force. However, existing sociocultural norms, gender-based discriminations, and practices have a detrimental effect on women’s ability to access and use ICT to its fullest capacity and potential.
UN Women promotes and advocates young girls’ access to and use of ICT for advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. It builds the capacity of young girls and women to increase their entrepreneurial skills and livelihood opportunities which contributes to close gender gaps in the digital divide and other related constraints that disadvantage women, including heavy workloads.
UN Women has been implementing the African Girls Can Code Initiative (AGCCI) that trains young girls to become programmers, creators, and designers, placing them on track to take up education and careers in ICT and CODING through conducting regional and national coding camps. The program enables young girls to improve their skills in ICT including coding and programming. The program supported 450 young girls aged between 17-20 years in Ethiopia to participate in the national coding camps.
Currently, UN Women in collaboration with the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs(MOWSA), Ministry of Innovation and Technology(MOIT), Ministry of Tourism, and Ministry of Labor and Skills(MOLS) is planning to award young girls who are computer programmers with innovative technologies; and products that have the potential to support other women in business, women enterprises, returnee migrant domestic workers to support them to engage in better livelihood options and women in agribusiness cooperatives as well as to support gender-responsive tourism. . Thus, to motivate and build the capacity of these girls having already existing innovative initiatives/ projects/programs/products/services that can support other women to increase their skills, facilitate better business operations, and thereby increase earnings and livelihood status as well as engage in public discussions including the national dialogue. UN Women will provide an award for best innovators and programmers.
Purpose
The major objective of the award is to support young women/girls’ innovators, and programmers to scale up and better operationalize their ongoing initiatives and disseminate their products/services to the identified groups. The intended groups/targets are fellow women/girls in business, returnee migrant domestic workers, women-only primary cooperatives (both in rural and urban settings except Saving and Credit Cooperatives), and women in the tourism industry.
Thematic areas and expected results.
- Improved business operations/workflow,
- Created better employment opportunities for women/young girls,
- Reduced women’s unpaid care and domestic work
- Prevention of violence against women in their work place
- Improved women cooperatives /joint business’s productivity and sustainability
- Improved engagement of returnee migrant domestic workers in livelihood activities
- Gender-responsive tourism operations and women in the sector
- Increased women’s participation and representation in social/public and business dialogues,
- Address risks of digital technologies to gender equality and women empowerment
Selection criteria
The award is designed to inspire and recognize innovative young girls with initiatives/projects on ICT that have the potential to drive a positive impact in the following areas, which are in line with the selection criteria.
- Contribute to women’s economic empowerment and GEWE
- Promotion of technologies into business
- The depth of the impact on improving women’s and young girls’ life
Eligibility Criteria
The criteria for selecting potential applicants shall be based on an individual or group basis. Applicants may apply for the award if they meet the following requirements: –
- Young girls in the age group of 18 – 35,
- Nationality – Ethiopian
- Has initiated/developed/implemented innovative initiatives/projects/programs using ICT. Initiatives/projects/programmes which are at just idea level and not tested or operationalized are not encouraged. Efforts should have been made to operationalize the initiatives /projects/programs which can be at the start-up stage.
- The applicant(s) should be a leader of the initiative/project.
- Not been awarded in any national competitions with similar proposal/initiative/innovation,
- The initiative should not be more than 2 years since it started,
- The startup shall have growth potential and a scalable business model,
- If an applicant is a university student, she should be in a graduating year,
Award
Young females who win the competition will receive an award of 150,000 ETB each to further improve their project/initiative at a ceremony that will be held in Addis Ababa
The applicant who wins the competition should:
- Give consent to the publication of the initiative in platforms handled by UN Women (websites, social media, publications, newsletters, events),
- Be presenting the initiative at the award ceremony to be held in Addis Ababa.
- Complete the initiative within two months of receiving the award, if the initiative is at the process stage,
- Can attest that the initiative is her original work/ innovation/
- Assure that she contributed to and will keep on contributing to the operationalization of the innovation,
- Sign MOU with UN Women to scale up and operationalize their initiative to support other women and girls based on the thematic areas she awarded for,
Sustainability
Following the award ceremony, close follow-up and technical support will be provided to winners to implement their initiatives and support other women in linking them to the market and engaging them in business networks. To ensure this a Memorandum of Association (MOU) will be signed between the winners and UN Women and the organizing team clarifying roles and responsibilities.
How to Apply:
Innovative young girls are requested to submit the following application documents to UN Women job portal, and the Ministry of Labour and Skills website: https://mols.gov.et/call-for-applications-award-for-young-girls/. The call can also be accessed through different social media including telegram.
- Submit two (2) a page letter of motivation and achievements
- Submit a concept note with a clear objective of the initiative/project/program with justifiable outputs including how it contributes to women’s economic empowerment and the thematic area that she is applying for.
- Submit a plan for further strengthening and operationalizing the initiative/project
The deadline to submit your application is October 27, 2023, If your application is successful, you will be contacted by the team on the next steps including interviews and related evaluation mechanisms.
Please note: If you are applying on behalf of a group initiative, we will consider it as a team in the competition.
