Here’s How Your Organisation Can Access Grant Funding From Google’s Global Impact Challenge for Women and Girls

To mark International Women’s Day, Google is making an open call for applications for grant funding from its new Global Impact Challenge (GIC) for Women and Girls, to reinforce the organisation’s commitment to the empowerment of women and girls on the African continent.

Building on their previous work in gender equity, through which Google has given over $55 million in cash grants to non-profit organisations that support gender equity and access to opportunity for women and girls around the world over the past five years, with grantees like the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Laboratoria and GiveDirectly, Google is seeking applications from organisations in Africa and around the world.

Focused on changing the status quo, the GIC for Women and Girls follows initiatives like the ‘2019 Africa launch of Women Will’, ‘Google’s initiative to create opportunities for women’, and ‘Google’s #IamRemarkable workshop series’, which goes to offset conditioning that women shouldn’t celebrate their achievements. The organization will provide $25 million in overall cash grants to nonprofits and social enterprises creating pathways to prosperity for women and girls.

“Empowering women and girls in Africa to reach their full economic potential, and to thrive, is more critical now than ever before as they bear the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Juliet Ehimuan, Country Director, Google Nigeria, quoting the Foresight Africa report 2021. It confirms that the coronavirus has “exacerbated already-existing gender inequalities, laying bare serious fault lines in safety, physical and mental health, education, domestic responsibilities, and employment opportunities… As economies and societies rebuild, we need bold new ideas that will propel us forward. We can’t afford to go back to the way things were, and we certainly can’t do it alone,” she adds.

Organisations should submit their applications at g.co/womenandgirlschallenge by 11:59 pm GMT on Friday, 2 April. The application review and selection process will be presided over by an all-female panel of expert Google executives and world/business leaders, including Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women; Victoria Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on SDGs; Graça Machel, Founder, Graça Machel Trust, and Juliana Rotich, Kenyan information technology entrepreneur, once the applications close.

Grantees, who will be announced later this year, are eligible to receive funding ranging from $300,000 to $2 million. Selected organisations will also receive capacity building support and mentoring from Googlers.

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