Student teams, volunteers interested in answering the President Bill Clinton’s early childhood education challenge now being sought
Rutgers University has been selected to host a quarterfinal competition of the Hult Prize, the world’s largest student competition and start-up platform for social good. The competition partners with President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, the innovative crowdsourcing platform, to identify and launch disruptive and catalytic social ventures that aim to solve the planet’s most pressing challenges. The annual competition awards $1M in start-up funding to the winning team.
Hult Prize at is a quarterfinal program for the Hult Prize, where local university competition winners automatically advance into one of the six regional final events. It gives participants an opportunity to bypass the traditional Hult Prize application process and fast tracks the university-selected team and idea through to one of five regional final rounds of competition.
The target social impact area of focus/theme for the Hult Prize changes annually; it is selected and announced by President Bill Clinton. The 2014-15 theme will be early childhood education and the word gap.
In search of its next game-changing start-up, Hult Prize at is hosting college and university events around the world beginning in October. Becky Kelleman, a second year Master of Public Policy student at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, will be coordinating Rutgers University’s local competition.
“At Rutgers we devote our time and energy toward changing the world, and now we have the unique opportunity to bypass the overall application process by hosting an intra-university competition across all Rutgers’ campuses to select a campus winner who will then compete and represent Rutgers University at the Regional Finals in March 2015,” said Kelleman. “This is our chance to show the world that Rutgers University is not only dedicated to social change, but destined to make an impact.”
The Rutgers University intra-university competition will be held at the Bloustein School’s Civic Square Building in New Brunswick, NJ on December 6, 2014. Volunteers and student teams are actively being sought; those interested in participating in the competition should contact Becky Kelleman atbecky.kelleman@rutgers.edu.
The winner of the intercampus event will automatically advance to compete in one of six regional finals happening across the world. One winning team from each regional competition will then move onto a summer business incubator, where participants receive mentorship, advisory, and strategic planning assistance as they create prototypes and set-up to launch their new social business. A final round of competition will be hosted at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in September, where CGI delegates select a winning team and awards the $ 1M prize. President Clinton has said, “The Hult Prize is a wonderful example of the creative cooperation needed to build a world with shared opportunity, shared responsibility, and shared prosperity, and each year I look forward to seeing the many outstanding ideas the competition produces.”