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The World Bank Group and Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) has announced a new open call for awards recognizing promising innovations aimed at preventing gender-based violence.
    
Applications to the Development Marketplace for Innovation in Prevention of Gender-Based Violence, which opened in July, must be received online by October 1, 2016.

SVRI and the World Bank Group will disburse more than US$1 million to advance evidence-based interventions to prevent gender-based violence (GBV) in low- and middle-income countries. An expert panel will select winners engaged in research, interventions, or other activities related to GBV prevention based on overall merit, research/project design and methods, significance, project manager/team, and ethical considerations.

All applications must be submitted and received via the SVRI and World Bank Group Grant Awards online system at https://proposalcentral.altum.com by midnight (South Africa time, or 4:59:59 EST) October 1, 2016. Only applications submitted through the online system before the closing date and time will be considered.

Partnerships between multiple organisations are encouraged; for example, a local NGO and an academic institution. The partnership between these two types of organizations should have as an objective to build the research capacity of the implementing agency.

Winners will be announced in April 2017. The competition is sponsored by the World Bank Group and SVRI in honour of GBV victims and survivors around the world and in memory of Hannah Graham.
    
Hannah Graham (February 25, 1996 – September 13, 2014) was a British tech student of University of Virginia, United States. She was murdered by a sex predator and serial killer, Jesse Matthew. Prosecutors and Matthew's defence lawyers agree he inappropriately touched and harassed several women in mall bars on Friday, Sept. 12, 2014, before he saw Graham walking alone at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia, shortly after 1 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2014.
    
According to the grant guidelines on http://www.svri.org, “The focus of this award is on building evidence for the primary prevention of GBV as a mechanism for preventing future perpetration and victimisation. Gender-based violence can include but is not limited to, intimate partner violence, sex  trafficking, sexual  harassment, harmful traditional practices such as early and forced marriage, so called 'honour' killings, and female genital mutilation/cutting.”
    
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual partner violence or non-partner sexual violence, or roughly 938 million women.
    
The costs of gender-based violence are substantial. Violence against women and girls impedes their full participation in society, limits access to education and economic participation, and hinders efforts to achieve gender equality broadly. Selected country estimates suggest that in out-of-pocket expenditures, lost income, and reduced productivity, intimate partner violence alone can cost up to 4 percent of GDP – more than many governments spend on primary education.
    
In April 2016, the World Bank and SVRI awarded nine teams from around the world a total of US$1.2 million. The winners, chosen from more than 300 submissions by research institutions, NGOs, and aid and other organizations, were from Bangladesh, Brazil, Kenya, Lebanon, Moldova, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, and Uganda.
    
In 2015, in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank and George Washington University Global Women's Institute, the World Bank launched a new Violence Against Women & Girls Resource Guide to help development professionals integrate violence prevention and response into their programming. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) has now joined that effort.