Tags: MENA Region / Cities / Gender / Resilience / Urban / 2015

By: Banco Mundial

Context

While around the world, the number of disasters has almost doubled since the 1980s, in MENA, the average number of natural disasters has almost tripled over the same period. Approximately 40 million people have been affected by over 350 natural disasters between 1981 and 2010. Vulnerabilities are on the rise across the region, with risks particularly high in urban areas as a result of rapid urbanization, conflict, massive influx of refugees, population growth, unplanned urban development, scarce water resources and arid climates.

The Women for Resilience Program
The Women for Resilience Program (W4R) aims at empowering women in tackling urban risk and developing resilience in cities across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Launched by the World Bank in January 2015, with the support of IE Business School and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), the Program piloted a startup competition in three cities in MENA: Beirut, Cairo and Djibouti. More than two hundred teams from the three cities, including women and men, presented start-up proposals. After careful due diligence and selection, seven teams qualified for the Grand Finale. The finalists’ proposals tackle resilience challenges across various sectors including energy, waste management, preventive healthcare, transport and informal settlements.

Location: Madrid, Spain

By: IE Business School

Women for Resilient Cities Acceleration Program by IE Business School

The World Bank in partnership with IE business School has launched the WE’Resilient Cities, a start-up competition to encourage innovative female-run business solutions to address urban risk in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In the week from 14 to 18 September, we celebrated the Women Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program for Resilient Cities 7 finalists in a Madrid Bootcamp: IE Campus had been the place to connect with other entrepreneurs, investors and specialized trainers in specific hands-on sessions: Specialized program organize for the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center in which the participants learned in a -full program of one week- about Startup Tools, Growth Hacking, Sales, Operations, Finance, HR, Startup valuations and Legal and Negotiation.