Bill Clinton: Hult Prize for Social Entrepreneurship Start-up with $1,000,000

Do you have a big vision that you want to see brought to life? I bet some of you do.

Then you may want to take a look and chance at the Hult Prize Foundation by Bill Clinton – one of the world’s biggest start-up accelerators for social businesses.

Every year from 2010, teams from over 2000 campuses throughout the world have been competing to solve the planet’s biggest challenges with innovative ideas for sustainable social business start-ups. The winning teams have their projects implemented, mentored and consulted through their initial start-up ideas.

The 2013 and 2014 challenges by the Foundation were respectively Global Food Crisis and Healthcare for Urban Slums.

A $1,000,000 prize will be awarded to a winner selected among 6 regional finalists soon after the Clinton Global Initiative meeting last Wednesday (Sep 24th).

This year’s ideas to combat the healthcare issues for urban run-down are: 100% Xylitol chewing gum for tooth decay by University of Pennsylvania, low-cost NPWT for open wounds by MIT University, low-cost eyeglasses by ESADE Business School, bees as diabetes detectors by HEC Paris, micro-insurance health network by Indian School of Business and Glucose urinalysis strips for diabetes management by York University.

What really drew me in is that these ideas are NOT super sophisticated. These are what an average person like me and you can do. My friend at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA) made a good-willed joke about this: “People can brainstorm these ideas in a few minutes!”

That to say, they are not as unattainable as we may think. However, the decisive factors are still determination and practicality during your project’s implementation.

So, if you are flipping a coin about whether to take the 2015 challenge for Early Childhood Education, you should probably look around, keep your mind open, and start from some small matters such as eyeglasses and pencil cases.

Source: Hurt Prize Foundation.

Credit: Hult Prize photo.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR GLOBAL URBAN SLUM IMPROVEMENT: Tweet for @SweetBitesGum for tooth decay prevention and visit REACH, Bee Healthy for diabetes detection, Wi Care for open wounds and Harambee for vision correction. 

UPDATE ABOUT THE HULT PRIZE 2015: According to Yale Daily News, this year’s competition by the Hult Prize Foundation is going to be held at Yale University. It means that a lot of Yalies are anticipated to participate in the competition. In fact, two teams from Yale won the tickets to the regional finalist round in the 2014 challenge. What a good news, as this Hult Prize’s edition of Early Childhood Education will draw attention of even more talented, visionary trailblazers from such a top-notch university as Yale!