One hundred $100,000 grants for innovative poverty and education solutions

Over a three-year period, Misk Grand Challenges plans to launch new challenges every six months. They will be offering 100 young innovators across the world a grant of $100,000 to develop their ingenious ideas into a concrete proof of concept. Ideas must be submitted around two themes: education and global citizenship.

On Tuesday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a partnership with the MiSK Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic organization established by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Bill Gates gave $10 million for the Grand Challenges.

The charity is looking for “innovative solutions to challenges facing education systems.” And it’s also looking at ideas to help deliver on the “Global Goals for Sustainable Development” such as reducing poverty and making sure everyone has access to clean water.

We face a global challenge: half the world’s population is under 30, and almost 90% of them live in emerging and developing economies. Two thirds of children starting school today will enter professions that don’t exist yet. Knowledge is the currency of the future, so we must evolve our old thinking and approaches to meet the needs and aspirations of the next generation.

Global Citizenship

They are 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.

This challenge is about testing and implementing concepts and strategies to engage young people in efforts that will reduce inequality related to the first six Global Goals:

Goal 1: No poverty
Goal 2: Zero hunger
Goal 3: Good health and well-being
Goal 4: Quality education
Goal 5: Gender equality
Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation

What they will consider funding:

Proposals that:
* Address the Challenge by showing how they will lead to actions taken by young people that will positively impact one or more of the first six Global Goals.
* Outline concepts that have the potential to be scaled up.
* Focus on learning and gathering data and evidence about how to do positively engage youth by doing that effectively, rather than trying to go for scale or solely developing research.
* Have the potential for scale and depth at reasonable costs.
* Focus on a specific geography or community, but should link to efforts beyond that locality.< * There are no geographic constraints as to where in the world proposals should be focused. * Are entirely online and technology-based, or blended technology and face-to-face, or predominantly offline, with limited use of technology. * Explain how the activities proposed will lead to the results expected, based wherever possible on experience and data * Show how the proposed concept or program could in the future achieve the scale and depth of engagement with a clear set of measurements at the pilot stage. * Describe the innovative approach captured by the concept. The initial pilot project must test the concept at some minimal scale that produces data upon which decisions for future funding could be made Education

They are 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. They want your bright ideas to help remove these barriers.

They are looking for new innovative ideas that transform teaching or school leadership to better prepare children with the 21st century skills they need to succeed in the future. Modern 21st century skills, such as problem solving, leadership, creativity, and adaptability, require a new active, student-centred system for learning. We seek ideas that better prepare teachers and school leaders to drive this new active 21st century system for learning.