Challenge Fund
Palladium commits 1.5% of its profit before tax to support entrepreneurs, start-ups, and innovative organizations, advancing the communities, economies, and societies where they operate. Kyeema has partnered with Palladium to manage its positive impact initiatives worldwide, including the Challenge Fund.
Jobs for Refugee Returnees
Through this challenge fund, we’re seeking proposals from organisations that offer innovative and sustainable solutions to building a strong post conflict labour market, which in turn, will support economic reconstruction and social transformation.
Innovations could include, but are not limited to:
- Skills matching for refugees
- Market-led training and job placement services in post-conflict environments
- Income-earning opportunities like training stipends, internships and apprenticeships
- Innovative technologies that address unemployment and skill building
- Wraparound services that support job placement, including childcare, transportation and health services
We are looking for solutions that:
- Pilot innovative and cost effective approaches
- Connect and prepare individuals for long term employment
- De-risk start up ventures targeting post conflict workforce building
- Leverage partnerships with businesses, civil society and government
- Can be scaled up and applied across different country contexts
Applications to the Palladium Challenge Fund are eligible for funding if they are from a for-profit, non-profit, or grassroots entity, including small or start-up organizations. Applications are typically for single-year activities, although multi-year applications are considered on a case-by-case basis, and for funding of no more than AU$100,000.
To apply for funding of up to $100,000.00 please submit a concept note to palladium@kyeemafoundation.org.
Applications are due 31 July 2024.
Past Projects
2022 Measuring the Value of Nature
Space4Good
Space4Good is developing their ‘Carbometrica’ Measurement, Reporting & Verification (MRV) tool for remote-sensing biomass and carbon assessment of agroforestry and afforestation projects. Palladium funding will help support the development of a new AI and machine learning algorithm for the South East Asian eco-region.
Status: In progress
Treeconomy
Project will focus on training and placing female Palestinian refugees in the tech industry, showcasing a scalable social enterprise model that can reduce barriers to women’s representation in tech. It has strong replication potential in the digital industry, which has two million open development roles.
Status: In progress
FarmTree B.V
FarmTree B.V will pilot and test their FarmTree Tool in Ethiopia’s coffee system, helping to integrate carbon and biodiversity credits and certification, and improve agroforestry planning and management for up to 12,000 coffee farming households.
Read more on this project here.
Status: Complete
2022 Jobs for Refugees
Lima Farm
Lira Magoya in Uganda will provide training, employment, and sales opportunities in cassava farming and processing for refugees from South Sudan. Palladium funding will help provide training in cassava production and processing, distribute seeds (often drought resilient) to outgrowers, and expand cassava processing capacity. Cassava outgrowers will also improve nutritional outcomes as farm families consume cassava they grow, and increase farm incomes by selling a portion of production.
Read more on this project here.
Status: In progress
Incluyeme.com
Will partner with the National Technological University of Argentina, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and 600 employers to train and place Latin American refugees in well-paying jobs. The project will help build local capacity and relationships across the university, private sector, and refugee-serving groups to train and place marginalised populations in growing digital sectors.
Status: In progress
CONCAT Tech
Project will focus on training and placing female Palestinian refugees in the tech industry, showcasing a scalable social enterprise model that can reduce barriers to women’s representation in tech. It has strong replication potential in the digital industry, which has two million open development roles.
Status: Complete
2021 Valuing Nature
Oyster Heaven
Oyster Heaven aims to unlock the proven conservation benefits and promising commercial opportunities of oyster reef regeneration, by providing missing technologies and protocols that would allow the regeneration and conservation of this natural capital to become scalable and monetisable. One of the key benefits of oyster reefs lies in their ability to sequester (among others) carbon, nitrogen and phosphates from water at far lower opportunity cost than land based ecological interventions. Growing recognition of the damage caused by these substances has created incentive for a trading scheme in phosphates and nitrogen (similar to existing carbon credit trading schemes). This creates an opportunity to develop a profitable business model around regenerating lost oyster reefs. The core objective is to develop and test a key innovative technology (biofilm) as a growth medium for oyster beds. Longer term this would inform a set of products, tools and protocols which would allow oyster reef regeneration to be scalable, affordable and sustainable.
Status: Complete
Read more on this project here.
Rebalance Earth
This project aims to build a marketplace for buyers to purchase ecosystem services credits produced by keystone species, in this case forest elephants. Through the sale of ecosystem services credits, the pilot will demonstrate the ability to transfer funds from buyers to local communities and wildlife justice initiatives in a transparent, traceable and trusted manner, establishing a higher monetary value for living keystone species that far supersedes its value when dead. Funds from off-setters will go towards supporting wildlife justice initiatives and communities responsible for the protection of keystone species.
Read more on this project here.
Status: Complete
Nakau Program
The project aims to assist indigenous landholders in Erromango, Vanuatu to generate financial incentives to protect their ecosystems, which can then deliver a pathway for sustainable development and livelihoods, as well as co-benefits associated with ecosystem services such as carbon emission reduction and local nature-based resilience. The project aims to establish and trial an innovative approach with the Erromango Forest Carbon project by aiming to design, test and strengthen an innovative and sustainable business model to manage an island-scale forest carbon project.
The project aims to scale this innovative nature-based solution through improving land use planning approaches on an island scale and finance the development of community level land management activities to support forest restoration efforts and diversify livelihoods of community members. This business model and unique methodology will be established with the support of Nakau and their implementing partners Live and Learn Vanuatu to support local communities to manage their own forest carbon project and benefit sharing.
Status: Discontinued
Related Articles
https://i0.wp.com/kyeemafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Challenge-Fund-2--scaled.jpg?fit=2365%2C2560&ssl=1
2560
2365
Eliza Smith
https://kyeemafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Kyeema-Foundation-logo-400w-resize.png
Eliza Smith2022-06-15 17:44:342023-06-28 15:31:40Challenge Fund 2022
https://i0.wp.com/kyeemafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/elephants-photo-blog-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1280&ssl=1
1280
2560
Eliza Smith
https://kyeemafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Kyeema-Foundation-logo-400w-resize.png
Eliza Smith2022-05-06 15:00:452022-08-30 12:54:25Valuing nature by developing ecosystem services credits for keystone species
https://i0.wp.com/kyeemafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Challenge-Fund-Recipients-2021-copy-3.png?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1
1080
1080
Eliza Smith
https://kyeemafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Kyeema-Foundation-logo-400w-resize.png
Eliza Smith2021-11-02 12:07:422022-07-05 19:16:12Palladium Challenge Fund Recipients 2021