World Bank Development Marketplace: Gender-Based Violence Innovations (2019 Archive)

World Bank Development Marketplace: Gender-Based Violence Innovations (2019 Archive)

This page is a historical reference, not an open grant listing. The World Bank Group and the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) ran a themed Development Marketplace for innovations addressing gender-based violence (GBV). The verified call closed on September 13, 2019. The official World Bank pages reviewed for this update do not announce a later general Development Marketplace round or a new deadline, so applicants should not treat this page as permission to submit today.

The old version of this listing described a broad, rolling World Bank grant for poverty, climate, inclusive growth, and sustainability projects, with awards of up to $300,000 and a November 2024 deadline. The official material does not support that description. The World Bank’s current program page describes a completed, themed initiative: the GBV Development Marketplace launched in 2015, ran for five years, supported 50 projects in 34 countries, and distributed $5 million in award funding. It says winning teams received up to $100,000 each. The 2019 call was the fifth year of that initiative.

Verified facts at a glance

The amount in the table is the maximum described on the World Bank’s program page. It should not be read as a guaranteed award, a current budget ceiling, or a promise that every selected project received the same amount. The official call announcement emphasized that the partners would distribute funding to advance evidence-based work; the program page reports the maximum award figure and the initiative-wide total after the program’s awards were made.

What the historical opportunity was

This was not a standing grant window for any organization with a promising idea about development. It was a focused awards program built around preventing and responding to gender-based violence. The World Bank Group and SVRI presented the call as support for promising innovations, with funding intended to advance evidence-based interventions in low- and middle-income countries.

The program page explains that the initiative supported 50 projects in 34 countries during its five-year run. The work included research, interventions, and other activities connected to GBV prevention and response. That breadth matters: a proposal did not have to be a single service-delivery model, but it did need a clear relationship to the subject and a credible basis for the proposed work. A generic poverty, climate, education, or sustainability project would not fit merely because it served a low-income community.

The World Bank page also places the program in a wider development context. GBV can restrict participation in education, work, and public life, and it has consequences for health, safety, and economic opportunity. Those statements explain the program’s development rationale, but they do not turn every development project into an eligible proposal. The subject of the call remained GBV prevention and response.

The initiative was sponsored by the World Bank Group and SVRI in honor of people affected by GBV and in memory of Hannah Graham. The partnership structure is important for anyone researching the archive: this was a jointly presented thematic awards program, not a general World Bank application portal that remained open after the call ended.

Who the call was for

The official announcement describes the intended applicants by the work they proposed rather than by a short list of legal entity types. It says the expert panel would select winners engaged in research, interventions, or other activities related to GBV prevention and response. It also states that the funding was intended for evidence-based work in low- and middle-income countries.

That wording gives a more reliable eligibility test than the old page’s generic list of civil society organizations, social enterprises, and research institutions. A prospective team would have needed all of the following:

• A project with a direct GBV prevention or response purpose.
• A setting in a low- or middle-income country.
• A research, intervention, or related activity that could be evaluated on its merits.
• A project design and methods that reviewers could assess.
• A team with the experience and responsibilities needed to carry out the work.
• An approach that addressed ethical considerations, especially important when research or services involve survivors, children, or other people facing heightened risk.

The call’s criteria also suggest what would have made a proposal weak. A broad claim about helping vulnerable communities would not have been enough without a clear GBV connection. A project with an attractive technology but no credible prevention or response pathway would have struggled. Likewise, a proposal could be relevant but still fail if its methods, team, significance, or ethical safeguards were not convincing.

The official pages do not establish a universal applicant rule such as “only nonprofits” or “only universities.” They also do not support the previous listing’s claim that all civil society organizations, social enterprises, and research institutions were automatically eligible. For this archive, the defensible description is the one used in the call: teams working on qualifying GBV research, interventions, or related activities in low- and middle-income countries, subject to expert review.

How applications were submitted in the closed call

The 2019 announcement gives a specific historical application route. Applicants had to submit through the SVRI and World Bank Group Awards online system. The submission had to be received online by September 13, 2019, at midnight South African Standard Time, which the announcement also expressed as 4:59:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Only applications received through that system before the closing time were considered.

That is the complete application instruction that can be safely carried forward from the official announcement. The World Bank page now presents the program as a record of the initiative and its past events; it does not provide a live application form for a new cycle. The old page’s advice to navigate a general World Bank website for a 2024 application portal was therefore misleading and has been removed.

For someone studying the completed call, the announcement identifies the substantive areas that reviewers considered: overall merit, research or project design and methods, significance, the project team, and ethical considerations. A historical proposal reconstructed from those criteria would need to explain the problem, the intervention or research question, the way evidence would be produced, why the work mattered, who would do it, and how participants would be protected.

The source does not publish a current checklist of attachments on the program page. It would be inaccurate to state that a new applicant should prepare audited accounts, a fixed concept-note length, a particular budget template, or specified letters of support based only on this archive. Those materials may be sensible in many grant processes, but they are not verified requirements for a current Development Marketplace round.

What reviewers were looking for

The official criteria can be turned into a practical reading guide without pretending that the program is still open.

Merit. The proposal needed a meaningful problem and a response worth supporting. A strong case would have connected the intervention or research question to the realities faced by people experiencing GBV and explained why the proposed approach could add useful evidence or improve prevention and response.

Design and methods. Reviewers needed enough detail to judge whether the work could produce a credible result. Depending on the project, that might involve a research design, an implementation plan, a measurement approach, or a clear account of how an intervention would be tested and adapted. The key was not a particular method named in the old listing; it was a method that matched the question and could withstand expert scrutiny.

Significance. The application needed to show why the work mattered beyond a small, isolated activity. Significance could come from filling an important evidence gap, improving a prevention or response service, informing policy, or showing that a promising approach could be used in another setting. Claims about scale needed to be tied to a credible route, not just optimistic language.

Project team. The team had to be suited to the proposed work. Reviewers would reasonably want to understand who had subject expertise, who would manage delivery or research, who would handle data and safeguarding, and how partners would work together. A polished idea without the people and institutional arrangements to carry it out would be difficult to rate highly.

Ethical considerations. GBV work can expose participants and staff to serious risks. An ethically serious proposal would need to address confidentiality, informed consent, referral or support pathways, data security, safe recruitment, and the possibility that participation could cause harm or retaliation. Ethical review was not a decorative section; it was one of the explicit selection considerations in the official announcement.

What the archive means for applicants now

There is no verified open cycle to apply to through this listing. Do not use the retained 2019-09-13 deadline as a future date, and do not assume that the historic maximum of $100,000 remains available. The historicalReference = true metadata deliberately preserves the closed call as an archive entry while preventing it from being presented as a live opportunity.

Researchers and organizations can still use the official pages for background. The program page records the initiative’s results, past events, and partnership history. The 2019 announcement records the purpose of that year’s call, the closing date, the online submission route, the geographic and subject focus, and the review criteria. Together, those sources can help a team understand what a World Bank/SVRI thematic awards round looked like.

If the World Bank Group or SVRI announces a successor competition, it should be treated as a new opportunity rather than assumed to continue this one. A future announcement would need to establish its own theme, eligible locations, award amount, dates, application system, and requirements. Until an official source does that, this page should remain a historical reference and not promise a rolling deadline or a new round.

Official sources

• World Bank Development Marketplace: Innovations to Address Gender-Based Violence — program history, past events, project count, countries, award amount, and initiative-wide funding.
• World Bank and SVRI 2019 call announcement — purpose, eligible work, geographic focus, closing date, submission system, and selection criteria.

The page is therefore useful for historical research into a completed World Bank Group/SVRI funding initiative. It is not evidence of a current general-purpose World Bank grant, and it does not announce a successor cycle.