Women competition process english

WE始Resilient Cities

WORLD

BANK GROUP

WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP RESILIENT CITIES COMPETITION RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS MAKE RESILIENT CITIES COMPETITION RULES AND PROCESS DOCUMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. Rationale 3. Core Organizing Partners 4. Eligible Venture and Venture Ideas 5. Eligibility Criteria for Applicants 6. Competition Process 7. Required Application Information 8. Evaluation Criteria for the Selection of the Winners 9. Timetable 10. Selection Committee 11. Prizes: Finalists 12. Prizes: Winners 13. Legal Aspects 14. Intellectual and Industrial Property

1. INTRODUCTION Supporting inclusive and sustainable development by making cities safer, more resilient and more competitive is a large challenge in the Middle East North Africa (MENA region). Addressing this challenge, while also tackling notoriously low female labor market participation in the region is the driving force behind the “Woman Entrepreneurship Resilient Cities” Competition (WE’Resilient Cities). This competition encourages innovative female-owned and/or run business solutions to urban risk. The objective is to pick the best business ideas supporting urban resilience efforts and turn them into scalable businesses by offering selected teams a business support package.

Women or women-led teams from three cities in MENA – Cairo, Beirut and Djibouti – will participate in WE’Resilient Cities Competition by submitting their applications by Friday, April 10 by 11:59 pm EST. Applicants will present sustainable high impact business solutions to clearly identified city risks. The risks involve disaster events, and or other city level risk that can cause social and economic shock in the target countries. Applicants must clearly identify the key risks facing their cities and provide evidence of how these risks are affecting livelihoods and economic activity.

Applicants could provide business solutions to issues such as flooding, water security, climate risk, energy shortages, digital risk management, and health.

Examples of successful business ideas include: •

Solutions that integrate big data, analytics, and resilience land use planning, infrastructure design etc.

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Tools to facilitate the access to basic services by refugees

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Technology that provides timely risk information to stakeholders in case of emergencies

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Development of low-cost solar-powered fans and lanterns to address power cuts

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Development of emergency response application to communicate more effectively during emergencies, e.g. sale of shortwave radios in case mobile network fail

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Water harvesting and distribution system for water stressed cities

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Establishing water harvesting and distribution system to address water scarce cities reduce drought impacts

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Developing risk management digital education platforms to train city manager and first respondents in emergencies

Be creative! These are just examples of business ideas. The WE’Resilient Cities Competition wants to hear about the daily problems you face in your city and wants to help you address them.

2. RATIONALE Why Women? The competition targets women as they are often excluded from participating in economic activity, decision-making and risk management in MENA. By participating in the competition, women not only create economic opportunities for themselves and their communities in the rapidly evolving risk management marketplace but also address the problems they face in their daily lives.

Why Early Stage? Given the very low number of existing risk management businesses in the identified cities and the evolving nature of the industry, the competition focuses on early stage ventures.

3. CORE ORGANIZING PARTNERS • •

World Bank IE Business School

In close collaboration, the above-mentioned organizing partners will follow through to ensure the flawless execution of the competition. The partners will support applicants throughout the process and help them to transform their ideas into actionable business opportunities. They will provide guidance to the applicants by sharing their knowledge and experience and will address applicants’ questions throughout the competition.

4. ELIGIBLE VENTURES AND VENTURE IDEAS Applicants will present sustainable and high impact business solutions to clearly identified city risks. Risks involve disaster events, and or other city level risk that can cause social and economic shock in the target countries. Applicants must clearly identify the key risks facing their cities and provide evidence of how these risks are affecting livelihoods and economic activity.

Start-ups activities should benefit the cities where the competition is taking place, i.e. Beirut, Cairo, or Djibouti.

5. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR APPLICANTS Supporting inclusive and sustainable development by making cities safer, more resilient and more competitive is a large Applicants must be 18 years of age or older and must have a strong interest in starting their own business or expanding their early stage enterprise - both nonprofit and for profit. Eligible candidates are women or women-led teams of up to six. At least one member of the team or the individual applicant must be legal residents or citizens of Egypt, Djibouti and Lebanon. Documentation will be required of the finalists.

6. COMPETITION PROCESS The competition will be launched on March 5 in Madrid.

1. Competition Application Phase (March - April ‘15) Participants must fill in a form, submit a 2-page Executive Summary, as well as an optional 3 minute Video Pitch by Friday 10th April 2015 at 11:59pm EST. Applicants submit their application using this link: www.weresilient.org 2. Selection of semi-finalists (April ‘15) The application form, executive summary and 3-minute Video Pitch will be reviewed and 4 semi-finalists per city will be selected.

3. Face to Face Workshops A two day workshop will be organized in Cairo to support the semi-finalists in refining their business idea and developing them into actionable and scalable business models. During this workshop, the semi-finalists will learn how to refine their business ideas into effective business models. This workshop will focus on Design Thinking and Lean Startup methodologies to improve their business idea.

4. Online mentoring IE Business School will offer virtual mentoring to the semi-finalists. IE Business School has a team of mentors who supervise and support the implementation of students’ business plans from IE Business School. The team of mentors is formed by 100 alumni, successful entrepreneurs or with senior positions in large companies, which have great knowledge of multiple industries and different management areas within a company. IE mentors are experts in the process of creation, development and growth of a startup or expansion projects in more mature companies. The mentors will schedule milestones and goals to the semi-finalists and will support them in the process of designing and refining their business model 5. Final Deliverables Semi-finalists must submit a Status Report of their Business Proposal and a refined Executive Summary.

6. Selection of Finalists The selection committee will review the information and select the 2 finalists per city.

7. Grand Finale The finalists will receive support in practicing their pitch and refining their business proposals. They will then present at the Grand Finale in Marseille, France at the Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI) attended by industry leaders and members of the press. The selection committee will give immediate feedback on business ideas and will choose 1 winning team per city.

The semi-finalists should be able participate in the Face-to-Face workshop and Grand Finale events, which most likely will require traveling. The traveling expenses will be covered by the World Bank.

7. REQUIRED INFORMATION All submitted materials must be the original work of the participating team.

Application 1. Applicants are required to fill in the form 2. Applicants must submit an Executive Summary following these guidelines Final Deliverables Semi-finalists will submit the following: 1.

Refined Executive Summary: including information about your product or service, your management team, their roles and responsibilities, the market, the competitive landscape, the planned budget, execution plan or roadmap.

2.

Status Report: the semi-finalist should develop a report to highlight the advances they had during the mentoring period; how they validated the solution, reached to agreements or got feedback from the market etc.

8. EVALUATION CRITERIA Successful proposals will embody viable produt and or/service and will respond to the following criteria: • • • • • • • •

Readiness (concrete actionable plan for realistic implementation within a year) Demonstrated commitment of team behind the project Demonstrated relevant past-experience Innovation (new idea/approach) and application of new technologies Scalability (or replication potential of successful project) Impact on economic opportunities (creation of jobs, spillover effects etc.)

Use of evidence-based approaches and change management processes (proposal uses evidence to support the business model) Growth and financial sustainability (proposal demonstrates a pathway to growth and financial self-sufficiency through earned revenue, committed philanthropic capital)

9. TIMETABLE MILESTONE

TIMELINE

INFORMATION SESSIONS SUBMISSION OF APPLICATIONS SELECTION OF SEMI-FINALISTS (4 PER CITY) FACE-TO-FACE WORKSHOPS IN CAIRO ONLINE MENTORING SUBMISSION OF FINAL DELIVERABLES SELECTION OF FINALISTS (2 PER CITY) GRAND FINALE IN MARSEILLE (1 WINNER PER CITY) TRAINING AND MENTORSHIP FOR WINNERS

FEB. 15 – MAR. 4 MAR. 10 – APR. 10 APRIL 30 MAY 13 – 14 MAY 15 – JULY 1 JULY 24 AUG. 10 SEPT. 10 – 11 SEPT. 12

10. SELECTION COMITTEE The selection committee will be comprised of practitioners, faculty and professors of the World Bank, MIT Enterprise Forum, IE Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center, and the International Financial Corporation, and Smart Data Science.

11. PRIZES: SEMI-FINALISTS Semi-finalists will receive: • • •

An invitation to participate in a workshop in Cairo offered by the IE Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center.

Online mentoring by IE Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center.

Networking opportunities with other entrepreneurs and industry leaders in the risk management sector.

12. PRIZES: WINNERS In addition to the above, winners of the competition will be awarded with: •

Funding from private sector partners to launch their businesses. The amount will range between $30,000 –$100,000 depending on the needs of the winning projects.

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A 12-18 months business mentor in order to help overcome the country-specific barriers to launching the business, as well as to ensure sustainability.

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Visibility in various media, including conventional and social media outlets.

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Connection to local, regional and international financial institutions that focus on promoting women entrepreneurs.

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Provision of accelerated MBA training to assist candidates succeed in their business ventures

13. LEGAL ASPECTS The competition rules are binding throughout the entire duration of the WE’Resilient Cities Competition. Participating in the Competition indicates that teams accept these rules and regulations and agree to abide by them. The World Bank reserves the right to disqualify any team and/or team member they believe are not abiding by the rules of the WE’Resilient Cities Competition.

14. INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY ISSUES The We’Resilient Cities Competition honors the confidentiality of all participants’ business ideas and concepts. Documents submitted will not be released for any purposes other than use in the WE’Resilient Cities Competition. The Competition will not reproduce or disclose the contents of any documents to third parties without the prior written consent of its authors.

All public sessions of the competition, including the final oral business presentations will be open to the public. Any information or data discussed in the public sessions should be considered information that is likely to enter the public domain.