Regional Hult Prize competition sees USD competitors for the first time
The Hult Prize is an international competition for social entrepreneurship, and this year USD students had an opportunity to participate for the first time.
The university-level competition took place on Dec. 1 and the winners, Together We Stand, will now represent USD at the regional competition on March 15 and 16 in Boston, Massachusetts.
A second team from USD will also be competing at regionals. The Earth Runners participated in the competition and placed second. In order to continue competing, they entered the online competition and successfully moved forward to the regional competition.
Each year the Hult Prize theme is determined by the Bill Clinton Initiative and the United Nations. This year’s theme is youth unemployment.
Faith Ireland, sophomore sustainability major and member of Together We Stand, said her team has been meeting weekly to prepare for the upcoming regional competition.
“We want to represent USD as best as we can; we have been meeting every week and coming up with new ideas and approaches to our business ideas and making sure our presentation is as good as it can,” Ireland said. “We have also gotten input from professors and companies. It has been really fun trying to grow the company ourselves while we’re still at the beginning state.”
The team’s winning idea: provide children in undeveloped countries with prosthetics created by youth for youth.
Hal Downs, a sophomore business major and member of Together We Stand, said they took inspiration from the Toms Shoes company while developing their idea.
“This year’s Hult Prize challenge is to create 10,000 new jobs for youth over the next 10 years. Our team leader, Faith, came up with the idea for a get-one-give-one 3D printed prosthetic leg company,” Downs said. “This is a similar business model to that of Tom’s Shoes, but instead of shoes, it’s something people in underdeveloped countries have little to no access to: prosthetics.”
Ireland said she and her team hope their product will open up jobs in both developed and developing countries.
“So their youth can be employed in jobs that are just labor intensive since there is a shortage of jobs that are not labor intensive,” Ireland said. “It will open up a whole bunch of new doors.”
The Earth Runners platform is building a profitable global business dependent on the talents of indigenous youth while giving them a platform to increase awareness of their cultural history and societal issues.
Ghofrane Baaziz, an exchange student from Tunisia, North Africa, has competed and made it to the regional stage in the Hult Prize the last two years at home, and this year served as the campus director for the competition at USD.
“Since this is the first time the Hult Prize is held in USD, it was relatively smaller than the OnCampus rounds around the world. Usually, the average participation rate per campus is 15 teams,” Baaziz said. “We had seven teams participate this year. For a first time, it is a good number although we hope to see more participation in the future.”
Baaziz, a business major in her home country and a media & journalism major at USD, is taking a gap year this year. She is at USD on a scholarship program she said she received because of the Hult Prize.
Since her time at USD is limited to one year and she will be leaving at the end of the spring semester, Baaziz said she hopes the Hult Prize continues to grow at USD after she has left.
“I hope the Hult Prize continues on campus and someone else volunteers to keep it going so that USD is represented every year somewhere around the world in the regional finals,” Baaziz said.
In order for the competition to continue developing, Baaziz said more students need to be aware of the opportunity on campus.
“I believe we need more publicity to let students know about the existence of the competition because I am sure a lot of students would be interested in such a good opportunity,” Baaziz said. “Who wouldn’t want to compete in 25 different cities around the world for a chance to win a million dollars?”
Downs said the experience has given her a deeper understanding of starting a business.
“For me specifically, as a business major, it has been an eye-opening experience as to how difficult starting a company is and a great way to put what I have learned in the classroom to practice,” Downs said.
Ireland said she encourages all students to look into the Hult Prize competition, no matter their major.
“I am a sustainability major, so anything that has to do with business at all I’m not interested, but we all have ideas that we think the world can benefit from; we just don’t know where to start,” Ireland said. “The Hult Prize is a great and free way to make a change.”
