Supporting Evidence for Women’s Empowerment and Development: SEED Incubator

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Woman wearing a headscarf holding up a rug
Credit: UN Women / Joe Saade

Overview 

In partnership with the Meem Foundation, J-PAL MENA is launching an evidence-driven incubator program to support organizations in Egypt designing innovative solutions to advance women’s empowerment. Selected partners will receive funding, technical support, and hands-on guidance to pilot and rigorously evaluate their programs in health, firms & finance, and female labor force participation.

Description

The SEED Incubator Program (Supporting Evidence for Women’s Empowerment and Development) is a two-year initiative that supports organizations in Egypt to turn promising ideas into impactful, evidence-based programs aimed at improving women’s health, labor force participation, and economic empowerment.

Through this program, selected partners will:

  • Participate in a 3-day capacity-building workshop (January 12–14, 2026) covering program design, randomized evaluations, and ethical research practices.
  • Collaborate with J-PAL MENA researchers and policy experts to refine interventions and evaluation designs.
  • Receive funding of up to $80,000 for pilot program implementation, in addition to support for a rigorous evaluation to be carried out by J-PAL MENA.
  • Join a network of practitioners committed to learning, scaling effective solutions, and influencing policies using evidence.

The program emphasizes alignment with national policy priorities, scalability, and a strong commitment to learning through evaluation. 

Who should apply?

Organizations that have existing projects aligning with the thematic areas of the incubator,  are able to demonstrate the capacity to reach a large number of beneficiaries or service provision points under one project, operate in multiple governorates (directly or through partnerships), are willing to adapt program designs to ensure evaluation rigor, and have robust systems for implementation and financial management.

Who should represent your organization in the incubator:

  • Organizations should ideally be represented by multidisciplinary project teams that have the necessary authority and knowhow to shape program design and oversee evaluation efforts, across organizational divisions and levels, such as:
    • Decision-making: Staff member with decision-making power with regards to the project (e.g., head of department managing the project)
    • Project design: Staff member with expertise on project design, ideally involved in the design of the project pitched in the incubator.
    • Implementation: Staff with knowledge of the specific program/intervention that the organization is interested in evaluating and who can provide detailed information on the implementation aspects of the project.
    • Evaluation: Staff empowered to oversee/coordinate the implementation of the evaluation (Statistician / M&E specialist) within the organization

Timeline

  • Expression of Interest Submission Deadline: November 30, 2025
  • Shortlisting Announced: December 15, 2025
  • Incubator Workshop: January 12–14, 2026
  • Final Selection of Pilot Projects: July 2026
  • Pilot Implementation & Evaluation: September 2026 – September 2027

How to apply?

Full details on the application process are available in the attached Call for Applications document, located at the bottom of this page.

We invite civil society organizations, social enterprises, NGOs, and other implementing partners in Egypt that meet the eligibility criteria to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) through [this link], after carefully reviewing the detailed Call for Applications document.

For inquiries, contact: [email protected]. 

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