Welcome to the 2017 Competition!

We are excited to host the third global Ideas for Action Competition. Every year, students and young professionals from around the world participate to design ideas for financing and implementing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Winners of the competition will present their ideas during the IMF & World Bank Annual Meetings, receive support from a dedicated startup accelerator at the Wharton School, and benefit from unique networking opportunities with other young leaders as well as some of the most senior decision-makers in international development, academia, and the private sector.

Your proposal

We highly encourage you to submit an executive summary (1-2 pages). This way, we will be able to provide you with direct feedback that you can use to write your final proposal. Your executive summary should include the following:

• Title and team name
• Explanation of the problem and context: Briefly describe the problem that your proposal is addressing.
• Your solution: Succinctly describe your idea (including design, target population, stakeholders, incentives, and implementation)
• Expected impact: Why is it relevant?

Your Timeline

We encourage you to submit an Executive Summary of your proposal by December 31, 2016. After a first round review process, you will receive feedback and an invitation to submit your full proposals by February 28. Alternatively, you can elect to skip the executive summary stage and submit a full proposal by February 28:

• Deadline for submitting Executive Summaries: December 31, 2016
• Deadline for full proposal submissions: February 28, 2017
• Announcement of submissions selected for the final round: March 21, 2017
• Deadline for final submissions: April 17, 2017

Eligibility: Students and young professionals between the ages of 14-18 years and 18-35 years from around the world are invited participate.

Team Registration: Teams must consist of two to six members and may be formed across different schools, institutions, companies, countries, nationalities etc. Please register your teams prior to submitting your proposal. You will then receive all relevant updates regarding the competition and our upcoming events.

Submission: Proposals should be submitted directly to the I4A email account ([email protected]) in Microsoft Word or PDF format. Please name your file as follows: “2017_Country_TeamName”.

The full guidelines including a sample executive summary can be found here:

High School (14 – 18 Years)

Young Adults (18 – 35 Years)

For more information, visit here