Financed by the Slovak Ministry of Finance through the UNDP-implemented project “Slovak Transformation Fund”, and in partnership with the STEM4ALL network, BOOST: Women Innovators is an open call for innovative and/or tech-driven ideas that seek to bridge the gender digital divide and boost enablers for women and girls to advance and prosper.

Selected participants will take part in BOOST, an intensive 16-week online acceleration program, receiving world-class training and mentorship to develop, reimagine and scale their innovations. At the end of the program, participating organizations pitch their innovations in front of an international just and compete for grants of US$10.000.

Applicants: Women-led startups, SMEs, social enterprises, non-profits, and academic institutions

Geography of operations: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo[1], Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan

Development Challenges:

• Women and digital access and use: Innovations that help bridge the gender digital divide, enabling women and girls to equally access and use digital technologies.
• Women in the digital economy and STEM: Innovations that help increase women’s active participation in digitally transformed economies and STEM or boost opportunities for women to be creators/drivers of innovation.
• Women in data: Innovations that can help close the gendered data gap, using gender-sensitive data – data specific to women – to improve research, planning, design, monitoring in urban planning, transportation, policy, design, manufacturing, and other fields.

Terms of Reference for the open call and Selection Criteria for assessment and selection of participants to the BOOST Acceleration Program and for grant awards are found attached, as well as the Agreement Template which will be used to issue grants to the winning innovations.

Expected contract start date: August 2022

Expected contract length: up to 9 months

Maximum prize award: Up to US$10,000, the applicants provide co-funding of at least 50% of the total cost of the innovation project.

Applicants must submit their proposals through the Gust platform: https://gust.com/programs/boost

The application should be submitted by Tuesday 01 March 2022, Central European Time (CET), 23:59.

[1] References to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council resolution 1244 (1999)