UN Women, the UN organisation dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women has partnered with SEED and will sponsor one special SEED Gender Equality Award in 2011 to initiatives that are women-led or owned, and prioritise gender equality or women's empowerment as a core objective.

Aiming to encourage gender equality within the whole programme, SEED will also be looking at the integration of components that respect and advance gender equity and balance in all the SEED applications.

UN Women, which was created by the United Nations General Assembly in July 2010, aims to meet the needs of the World's Women by:

• Supporting inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms.

• Helping Member States to implement these standards, standing ready to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it, and to forge effective partnerships with civil society.

• Holding the UN system accountable for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress.

Read more about UN Women here.