Rahma Ahmed
By Ahmed Rahma
The charitable arm of a tech giant, Google, has called on non-profit organisations and social enterprises creating pathways to prosperity for girls and women to apply for mentorship and support from its company as well as up to $2m in funding.
The company made the call to tackle gender inequality in line with the International Women’s Day celebration, celebrated all over the world today.
The Impact Challenge for Women and Girls will commit $25 million to fund organisations that are “creating pathways to prosperity for women and girls”, the tech giant said.
Google.org’s president, Jacquelline Fuller, said the COVID-19 crisis has been “particularly devastating” to women.
According to a report, last week by PwC’s Women in Work Index, progress for women in work could be back to 2017 levels by the end of this year due to the impact of the pandemic.
Fuller said the new challenge is an opportunity to go out in the world and find the best ideas on how to advance economic opportunities for women and girls.
“We want to understand what you think could be the real inflection point along some of these pathways,” she said.
“Google is going to come alongside those winners and provide resources, which we know is what non-profits and social enterprises need the most.”
The chosen organisations will receive funding of between $300,000 and $2 million as well as technical expertise from Google employees.
To be part of the challenge, the company stated that the four areas of focus for applicants are how their idea can help women, how innovative the idea is, how feasible or realistic it is, and whether or not the idea is scalable.
“We are looking for ideas that are grounded in reality, do have a solid track record, but are innovative, new ideas that are really scalable,” said Fuller.
“We also want to make sure that we’re really leaning into equity on this project. We’re really looking for how we [can] help women and girls who are most disadvantaged.”
Applications will be judged by an expert panel that includes the first US national youth poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum and former Irish President Mary Robinson.
“We have a full range of people who understand what it takes to be successful,” said Fuller.
It further disclosed that applications are open for organisations around the world from today (March 8) till Friday, April 9 and selected organisations will be announced later in 2021.
