The boot camp, held on August 5-6 at Daffodil International University, will be followed by two pre-incubation sessions where they will be further groomed for the next stage of the competition- the Pitch Deck on September 5.

They will do a brief presentation and a quick overview of a business plan to a judging panel for the opportunity to win US$ 5000, said UN Women on Thursday.

In March 2019, UN Women launched the Innovators against Gender Based Violencecompetition supported by Global Affairs Canada.

UN Women sought innovators with ground-breaking ideas and solutions to empower women, especially within the area of preventing and eliminating violence against women.

The competition closed on April 30, with 75 applications from all over Bangladesh. The applications were shortlisted, and 11 finalists were selected in July 2019.

UN Women programme specialist Giulia Pelosi said, “We want women creating innovation for women because who can better understand women’s needs than women themselves.”

“For the longest time we have been trying to play our part in bringing about change regarding Gender Based Violence(GBV) in whatever capacity we possess. UN Women is giving us the perfect platform to work for an initiative that canactually help in this regard,” said Manshiah Anis.

She and her team are one of the 11 finalists of Innovators againstGender Based Violence competition, who intend to work with students using behavior modeling and active learning in schools to transform gender norms, toxic masculinity and gender-biases.