imaGen Ventures Youth Challenge 2024-2025

Generation Unlimited (GenU) is a world leading public-private-youth partnership (PPYP) platform that aims to ensure that every young person aged 10-24, including girls and young women, is either learning and/or working by 2030. It brings together public, private and youth actors to co-create, unlock investment and resources, and scale up innovative solutions related to secondary age education, skills for employment including entrepreneurship,employability, and youth engagement.

The Youth Challenge Bootcamp, is a three days residential workshop where shortlisted teams are supported to further explore the problem they want to solve, co-create and develop their unique prototype solution based on human centered design approaches. All teams will get an opportunity to pitch their solution and teams with the most innovative and potentially impactful solutions will be given the opportunity incubate their prototypes with funds and dedicated mentorship support.

👉 Young people who can participate are:

• Aged between 15 – 24
• Interested in working on solution projects on the impact of climate change.
• In a group of 3-5 people ensuring gender equality.

👉 Can participate:

• In a 3 days residential bootcamp
• If your project is selected for funding and consultation, the project may proceed to implementation, which may last at least until August 2025.

👉 You cannot apply for this special challenge if:

• Your solution/prototype is in a mature stage
• You have already received funds to develop your project in the previous year’s bootcamp or from other sources/challenges.
• You are a registered company or community organization.

👉 At least one of the team members should have a bank account.

👉 We welcome diversity! We welcome gender equality ethnicity, and disability

Yes, this is a residential program. Meals, accommodation and transportation costs will be provided. Duration of Youth Challenge Bootcamp lasts 3 days.

To ensure widespread access and regional inclusivity, the bootcamps will take place in eight divisional cities across Bangladesh. These cities include Chittagong, Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barisal, Khulna, and Dhaka. In the first phase, the bootcamps are tentatively scheduled to take place in the divisional districts on January and February 2025.

The bootcamps will be conducted under the guidance of experienced trainers and facilitators with expertise in their respective fields. The trainers will guide and mentor the teams participants throughout the bootcamp.

Teams with prototype who successfully are shortlisted for incubation by the end of the bootcamp, will be provided with funds and dedicated mentorship support and over a period of 2 – 3 months the teams will test and further improve their prototypes. Finally teams in incubation will be invited for a final GenU pitch event where the two most promising solutions will compete with youth teams from around the world for global funds and mentorship support in GenU’s global level Imagen Ventures Youth Challenge.

There is no registration fee for participating in the Youth Challenge Bootcamp.

Certainly! If you qualify to be a part of the bootcamp as per the requirements mentioned above, we strongly encourage you to get a team together and submit an application.

The applications submitted will undergo a thorough evaluation process led by a panel of experts. Initially, our team will ensure that all the required information is provided, and if any details are missing, we will promptly follow up with the applicants to gather the necessary information. Following this, we will assess the applications based on the following criteria:

• Does the application address any climate issues that affect you and your community?
• Is there a shortage of existing solutions to solve this problem?
• Can the team commit to bootcamp and subsequent implementation?

Submitting an application, participating in the bootcamp and potentially making it to incubation is a TEAM EFFORT. Your team can be a minimum of 3 and maximum 5 participants. You need to indicate all team members at the application stage.

Following the selection for the bootcamp, participants will engage in a three-day residential bootcamp. Upon completion of the bootcamp, if your team’s project is selected, then you will receive a fund to implement the project on climate issues, afterwhile the team will have the opportunity to showcase their achievements to the esteemed GenU Bangladesh Steering Committee through implementing the project.

All individuals participating in the bootcamp will be awarded a certificate of Completion/Participation. All individuals completing the Imagen Ventures Youth Challenge Course on ( https://bangladesh.passport2earning.org/#/course/6/item/36 ) will also be awarded a certificate.

The central focus of the bootcamp revolves around climate change and its multifaceted aspects and associated challenges.

You don’t need to bring anything as all necessary materials will be provided during the bootcamp! If you do have a mobile phone or a laptop you are welcome to bring it along.

Considering the sustainability of the impact of your idea, it may be turned into a social business venture, for which we will provide you necessary incubation and initial funding support. (Only for the selected teams)

Yes, youth with disabilities are very welcome to participate in the bootcamp; If you or any of your team members have a disability please let the organisers know so that we can help ensure appropriate accommodation and assistance.

Teams will be chosen for the allocation of funding based on the accomplishments of the the bootcamp, the innovative solutions they develop, and the quality of their project presentations. These criteria will be utilized to evaluate and select the most promising teams for financial support. The goal of the selection process is to identify the teams with the greatest potential to create community-changing projects; the youth who have the greatest passion and ability to learn and adapt to the difficulties that they will face.

The bootcamp ends with a judging process through which all participating teams pitch their ideas and a few are selected to move on to the next phase, which is the incubation phase. These young people may not be the ones with the greatest solution today, but are those that will continually work to improve themselves and their teams to accomplish great things in the future. Our judging criteria are focused on advancing these types of teams.

No, the fund must be used for the incubation of your solution and implementation of the project.

Presenting the impact/results of the implemented project in a national pitch event of Generation Unlimited in Bangladesh.