You might want to look into Startup Chile as a model as close to what you are describing as I can think. Equity free money to build things, with little oversight, and the only stipulation is giving back to the community. This usually happens via public workshops at universities, etc.

It's only 40k USD and only 6 months and the location isn't desirable for westerners to perm relocate and doesn't select for the top 5% of engineers but it's close.