Misk Grand Challenges - win $100,000 in funding

Do you have an innovative solution related to Global Citizenship or Education? You could win $100,000 to see that idea come to life. 

The vision:

In both wealthy and developing countries, we’re facing higher unemployment and lower civic participation amongst young people. They are not always listened to by governments, businesses or Non-Governmental Organizations, and they’re not always listening in return. To break this cycle and empower the confidence and leadership of young people across our economies and societies, we urgently need innovation.

Young people have exciting new ideas about how to tackle major challenges and improve situations in their communities. They have the ability to overcome the world’s biggest problems. Misk Grand Challenges aims to do the following:

Empower young people with the skills they need to succeed in the knowledge economy

Inspire young people with the passion to take on the world’s most challenging problems

Activate a new generation of leaders who can transform their communities and change the world

The Misk Grand Challenges:

Over a three-year period, Misk Grand Challenges plans to launch new challenges every six months, offering 100 young innovators across the world a grant of $100,000 to develop their ingenious ideas into a concrete proof of concept. 

The challenges focus on 2 key themes:

  • Global Citizenship: We’re looking for innovative ideas on how young people can help deliver the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Our Global Citizenship challenges seek to create a generation of young people committed to achieving these Global Goals, which include eradicating poverty, promoting health and wellbeing, delivering on gender equality and ensuring responsible consumption and production.
  • Education: We’re looking for innovative solutions to the challenges our education systems face in providing high quality teaching to all students. Each challenge will focus on a different aspect of the education system, and will seek to identify the critical barriers to success. We want your bright ideas to help remove these barriers.

What winners will receive:

  • $100,000 in grant funding
  • Attendance of the 2nd annual ‘Goalkeepers’ event in September 2018. Organized by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Project Everyone, this event aims to accelerate progress on the Global Goals by bringing together new generations of leaders to tackle extreme poverty and disease.
  • Attendance of the Misk Global Forum, an annual gathering that brings young leaders, creators and thinkers together with established global innovators to explore, experience and experiment with ways to meet the challenges of change.
  • Access to a virtual community of Grand Challenges awardees and partners a network of over 2,500 awardees

Deadline: 17 May 2018

Apply: Global Citizenship Apply: Education

Application information:

  • Projects are not required to be focused in particular geographic areas.
  • There is no age requirement, but we particularly encourage young people to apply.
  • Misk Grand Challenges innovators should be linked to an institution capable of receiving a grant. Our grants will not be made to individual people.
  • Your proposed solutions should target people under 30, in addition to any specific criteria mentioned in individual challenges.
  • Awards total US $100,000 each, to be provided over two years, with an opportunity to apply for follow-on funding afterwards.

More about Misk Grand Challenges:

Misk Grand Challenges is a collaboration between the Misk Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic foundation established by HRH Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to empower young people to succeed in the knowledge economy, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which funds global health and development programs for the world’s poorest people.

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