UNICEF Venture Fund: Up to $100K Equity-Free Funding for Open Source Tech Startups benefiting Children

They are offering equity-free funding for early-stage, for-profit technology start-ups that can improve the lives of children.

UNICEF’s Venture Fund is closely monitoring digital trends, particularly around connectivity, data integrity, and social media’s impact on misinformation. The Fund aims to invest in tools, platforms, and games that help youth identify misinformation and build media literacy.

They focus on the positive potential of technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data to validate information and develop solutions that enhance digital trust. They’re also exploring blockchain to secure data integrity and reduce intermediaries.

Focus Areas

• Currently, the Fund seeks companies that are leveraging AI or Blockchain software solutions to address some of their most pressing questions, which include but are not limited to:
  • Area 1: Misinformation and Disinformation - Are you creating tools, platforms or games leveraging new technologies to verify information and combat misinformation and/or disinformation? Or are you delivering behavioral interventions to consistently inform young people about misinformation and/or disinformation? They are particularly interested in approaches that address mis/disinformation in multiple languages and formats (e.g. audio, video, image) and encourage platforms accessible to persons with disabilities. Potential application could explore solutions such as:
    • Game-based social and behavioral change interventions or platforms to help identify mis/disinformation 
    • Mechanisms to review information, identify mis/disinformation, and/or provide legitimacy to true information shared online, for example software that can detect deepfakes in videos and images 
    • Platform-agnostic tools using data science and AI to identify and analyze false or inaccurate content, and track the source and/or spread of this content 
    • Interactive tools or games for children to engage with and learn about fact-checking 
    • Mechanisms to tag data or watermark content at the source or while its being circulated to increase trust in it 
    • Tools which leverage the power of crowds to collectively monitor or identify data inaccuracy and to build trust through the power of social networks 
    • Tools which can eliminate the need for third party auditing through innovative use of blockchains in a data collection or recording use case 
    • Tools to audit social media platforms which are non-transparent (such as platforms which do not disclose their content recommendation algorithms or peer-to-peer messaging platforms), to determine how effective they are at removing or labelling mis/disinformation 
    • AI-enabled systems to manage mis/disinformation during crises and ensure the dissemination of accurate information. 
  • Area 2: Data generation, collection and analysis - Are you using novel approaches to compile and validate large amounts of training data? Or creating new data through field data collection, crowdsourcing, or social network platforms? This could include use cases such as: 
    • Building safe and secure data collection and management systems following Open standards (for transparency and accountability) while anonymizing sensitive data or leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies 
    • Developing models to analyse large amounts of data, generate insights for decision-making and resource allocation 
    • Identifying methods to manage emotional or cognitive bias in data collection 
    • Generating new data through field data collection, crowdsourcing or social network platforms for understanding trends and conducting situational analysis 
    • Providing transparency and accountability to how data is collected, managed, analysed, bench-marked, and generated 
    • Developing systems for navigating existing resources and available information 
  • Area 3: Digital Trust - Are you leveraging existing and new technologies to build digital trust? Or are you generating insights to assess and mitigate the threats and harms for children in digital environments? They are seeking startups that are building new tools, for instance: 
    • Decentralized protocols for content ownership, attribution, and licensing using blockchain technology 
    • ML/AI applications to monitor and model potential online risks to children, including those generated by AI systems 
    • Blockchain tor AI tools to ensure credible proof of humanity and secure “KYC” processes. 
    • Tools that use digital footprints from sources like social media or mobility patterns to generate insights, such as risk analyses or forecasts to trigger interventions before a crisis occurs 
    • Tools that leverage blockchain to verify online content, for example by creating trusted collections of information voted on by verified sources against transparent criteria 
    • Systems which improve data provenance and auditability 
    • Game-based educational tools and guidance for children to learn about the concepts of privacy, respect and sharing of content online.

Funding Information

• UNICEF will consider applications for funding of approximately up to US$100,000 (in crypto currency) and will provide selected companies funding in ether or bitcon (ETH or BTC).

Eligibility Criteria

• UNICEF is looking to provide investment-style funding to early-stage technology startups. Only entities that fulfill these mandatory requirements will be considered eligible: 
  • Registered as a private company at the time of the Innovation Fund award (projected: 3 months from submission of EOI) 
  • A private company registered in a UNICEF programme country 
  • Working on open source technology solutions (or willing to be open source) under the following licenses or their equivalent: 
  • for software, a GNU General Public license, MIT or BSD, 
  • for hardware, a CERN, MIT or TAPR open license and 
  • for design or content, a CC-BY license 
  • An existing prototype of the open source solution with promising results from initial pilots 
  • Solution has the potential to positively impact the lives of the most vulnerable children 
  • Generating publicly exposed real-time data that is measurable 
  • UNICEF’s Innovation Principles.