UNICEF Opens $100,000 Climate Innovation Fund Targeting Child Health Solutions

Around the world, nearly one billion children are growing up in countries exposed to severe climate and environmental threats. At the same time, an estimated 466 million children now experience extreme heat days at least twice as often as previous generations did in the 1960s. Despite these alarming realities, young people are still largely overlooked when it comes to designing the very climate technologies intended to safeguard their futures.

UNICEF Ventures Funding Opportunity

UNICEF’s Venture Fund has opened applications for its Climate Ventures initiative, offering up to US$100,000 in equity-free funding to early-stage startups. The program targets innovators developing open-source, cutting-edge technologies that address the intersection of climate change and child health. This marks the first intake in a five-year investment strategy focused on advancing child-centered climate solutions.

The fund is particularly interested in solutions powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and other advanced technologies that can operate effectively in low-resource or emergency environments. Key focus areas include:

• Strategic planning: tools for hazard mapping, assessing vulnerability in schools and health facilities, AI-based carbon tracking, and identifying pollution hotspots
• Early warning and response: localized alert systems for floods, extreme heat, air pollution, and disease outbreaks, alongside innovations such as parametric insurance and decentralized sensor networks in schools and clinics
• Healthcare preparedness: predictive models for diseases like malaria and dengue, as well as systems that anticipate health risks linked to heatwaves, wildfires, or dust exposure
• Point-of-care support: offline-enabled AI tools for community health workers, multilingual triage platforms, and secure, consent-driven data-sharing systems

To qualify, startups must be registered in a UNICEF programme country, have a functional prototype, and be willing to adopt open-source licensing. The initiative also strongly encourages applications from women-led ventures and young innovators.

Application deadline: 17 May 2026