Resilience Innovation through Scaling Entrepreneurship (RISE) Urban Challenge 2025

Calling all applicants for Resilience Innovation through Scaling Entrepreneurship (RISE) Urban Challenge!!

The initiative is designed to align potential funders with innovative urban resilience projects, thereby highlighting the urgent need for urban systems transformation. The RISE Urban Challenge invites urban entrepreneurs, innovators, organizations, and consortiums from both the private sector—including start-ups and SMEs—and civil society or grassroots organizations based in low- and middle-income countries to apply, with a particular emphasis on youth-led and women-led initiatives. Selected projects will benefit from a tailored leadership and mentoring program, comprehensive communications support, and valuable connections to investors, as well as participation in a leadership academy facilitated by subject matter experts.

Get the Youth Opportunities IOS app here for the fully Funded opportunities.

Winners may be awarded prizes of up to US$50,000 to support scaling and implementation over 12 months, concluding in December 2026. The challenge seeks innovative solutions that address urban resilience challenges in contexts of informality, including climate risk, resilience retrofitting, water security, and urban migration and displacement.

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1.Youth Opportunities: https://m.me/j/AbZTmgEzD1UchDte/
2. Fully Funded Conferences: https://m.me/j/AbZTfhFTiPCnXf2D/
3. Full Scholarships: https://m.me/j/AbbrjbkOMM6I68Cs/
4. Paid Internships/Jobs: https://m.me/j/AbaAskb6jFFnRser/
5. Circle: https://m.me/j/AbY0vVKSPJULUnE4/

There is a need for a safe space to test and scale disruptive and bold ideas. GRP surfaces and tests resilience innovations and incubates new ideas by designing and running innovation challenges and supporting peer-to-peer learning on innovation.

Only 1.2% of urban climate investments currently target adaptation and resilience, indicating a critical need to diversify funding across various models—including for-profit, non-profit, and public–private partnerships—to support scalable solutions. Vulnerable urban populations, particularly informal workers, slum residents, migrants, displaced individuals, and both the young and elderly, face disproportionate risks from climate hazards and have limited financial means to recover from shocks. In response, the Global Resilience Partnership has launched the Resilience Innovation through Scaling Entrepreneurship (RISE) Urban Challenge to transform early-stage innovative ideas into sustainable, scalable solutions that build resilience in urban informality contexts while aligning potential funders and driving broader urban systems transformation.