Deadline: 31 January 2015
The World Bank Group and the Wharton School of Business are co-sponsoring “Ideas for Action,” a competition to mobilize youth across the development community to invent, foster, and inspire innovative solutions to financing development post-2015. Teams are invited to focus on one of the issues below and develop a creative solution that will increase the financing available and/or improve the efficiency and effectiveness of existing funds.
Thematic Areas/Issues
- Domestic Resource Mobilization: improving the ability of countries to collect and direct public resources generated from taxes and/or improve efficiency of public spending. Areas of particular relevance are:
- tax policy and collection
- harnessing sustainable streams of revenue from natural resources
- subsidy reform
- improving public sector procurement practices.
- Better and Smarter Aid: improving how aid is structured and disbursed in light of a rapidly changing donor environment. It include:
- improving aid disbursement models
- improving aid transparency and accountability
- integrating private philanthropy and global funds into the greater aid agenda.
- International Private Finance: improving business environments to attract investment. Areas of particular relevance are:
- creating policies that encourage investment, particularly in long time infrastructure
- mainstreaming the use of guarantees and risk insurance.
- Domestic Private Sector: mobilizing domestic private capital. Areas of particular relevance are:
- creating an enabling environment for business creation and growth
- increasing access to finance, greater financial inclusion for households and SMEs
- developing domestic capital markets.
- Business and Development Innovations: improving business environments in developing economies via innovative private/public partnership models. Areas of particular relevance are:
- grafting and implementing business-led collective action initiatives
- innovative models of delivering aid using private sector capabilities and public sector resources.
Competition Timeline
- Deadline for proposal submission: 31 January 2015
- Announcement of submissions selected for final round: 22 February 2015
- Deadline for final submissions of expanded proposals: 20 March 2015
- Announcement of winner(s): 5 April 2015
Benefits
Winners of the competition will be given an opportunity to influence the post-2015 financing discussions and its implementation, including:
- Present winning proposal at the IMF/World Bank Spring and/or Annual Meetings in April and October 2015, respectively.
- Engagement with experts from development organizations, academia, and business on finance for development post-2015.
- Participation in a boot camp, where the winners will visit a company, organization or university to take part in specific project implementation and get hands on experience.
- Participation in the Wharton School of Business Executive Development Program and Knowledge Exchange.
Eligibility Criteria
- Youth between the ages 18 and 35 from around the world can participate in the competition in a team.
- Team Composition must be 2 to 5 people and may consist of multiple nationalities and individuals from different schools, institutions, companies, etc.
- Applicant must register his/her team before submitting the proposal the competition.
How to Apply?
- Applicant team must submit their proposals via email.
- Proposal must be:
- Between 1,500 and 3,000 words, with proper citations and references.
- Teams should use the template in appendix 1 and include a 200-word abstract summarizing the key points of the proposal.
- The submission must be in Times New Roman, 12 pt font and must be sent in PDF or Microsoft Word format (in English, Arabic, French, Russian, Portuguese or Spanish).
For more information, visit Call for Proposals.
