When business magnate Michael Bloomberg launched its 2016 Mayors Challenge in Latin America and the Caribbean, an expected 900 cities among the 22 countries in the region were also expected to participate on the challenge. According to PR NewsWire, the Mayors Challenge requires a city to have at least 100,000 or more residents in order to join.

The aim of the Mayors Challenge is to collect new ideas that can help empower the city life as well as innovate others cities. Participants can expect a grand prize of $5 million and a consolation prize of $1 million for each four cities that also have competitive ideas. In the Mayors Challenge Official Website, it said "The Mayors Challenge encourages cities to generate bold new ideas that solve urban challenges and improve city life - and have the potential to spread."

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The winners of the challenge will be determined by Bloomberg philanthropies with the help of certain committee from the Latin America region, a key committee to determine the worth of each city's ideas. To narrow down what is expected of these ideas, competing cities are required to do challenges such as improve citizen engagement in local government, improve customer service for citizens and businesses, create government efficiencies and address a major social or economic issue in the local area.

Countries expected to participate on the challenge include Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Guyana, Guatemala and Nicaragua. According to Yahoo News, the inability of Cuba to join the competition has been highly related to the current trade strain between the U.S. and Cuba, something that the Bloomberg foundation confirmed to be existent.

This similar competition has been practiced within the U.S. and Europe. This time around, Bloomberg Philanthropies decided on launching in the Latin America region and the Caribbean. Providence, Rhode Island and Barcelona, Spain was the recipient of the first two grand prize of the Mayors Challenge.

Providence has since worked on developing the vocabulary of its poor children while Barcelona, Spain worked on improving the social presence of its elderly people. In his statement, Michael Bloomberg said "We're looking forward to seeing what exciting new ideas emerge."

Another factor that deems a city disqualified from the challenge is a one that doesn't have a federal district or what's normally known as local government. In 2015, Bloomberg's foundation set a total of $500 million to fund projects about the environment, public health, arts, education and new innovations.