Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology(BUET) Advances to Regional Finals of 6th Annual Hult Prize in response to President Bill Clinton’s ”Early Childhood Education – the Unmet Need of the Century”, held at its premises on November 01, 2014.
The Hult Prize has recently announced the winning team, “Halcyon”, from BUET that has advanced to the 6th annual regional finals of the competition. The Hult Prize is a crowdsourcing platform for social good, named one of the top five ideas changing the world by President Bill Clinton and TIME Magazine. In partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative, the innovative crowdsourcing platform identifies and launches disruptive and catalytic social ventures that aim to solve the planets most pressing challenges. This year, the Hult Prize is focused around finding solutions for the millions of slum dwellers around the world that are affected by ”Early Childhood Education – the Unmet Need of the Century”- a challenge selected by President Bill Clinton. The winning team members from BUET include- Muntaseer Bunian, Prattay Deepta Kairy, Md. Moinul Islam, Md. Arif Istiaque Khan, and Rajat Ghosh.
The team competed in the Hult Prize at BUET event on 30th October,2014 and built a solution to this year challenge by President Bill Clinton around Clinton’s ”Early Childhood Education – the Unmet Need of the Century” . Their start-up solution name is EduCart: which is basically a school-on-wheels ensuring that not a single indigent children is left out by going door to door with the most sophisticated pre-schooling but for only a small amount of money. EduCart itself is an interactive custom-made caravan designed to deliver modern day pre-schooling to children aged 2-6 with a large variety of lesson plans.
The team will now move on to compete at the Hult Prize regional finals in March 2015, which are being hosted at one of Hult International Business School’s five campuses in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai. BUET will compete in Dubai.
“I believe in three Cs, Choice, Chance and Change. You must make the choice to take the chance if you want anything in life to change. Besides this, One need to be focused on his/her goal and need to be crazy to change the world. People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. Hult Prize event can be the first step to that revolutionary journey but it should not be limited to hult prize competition!”, said Nazmus Sadat, Campus Director, Hult Prize at BUET.
Ahmad Ashkar, CEO and Founder of the Hult Prize attributes the success of the competition to the global youth revolution and said, “We continue to be moved by the large number of students from around the world who are capitalizing on the
opportunity to develop business models that target the bottom of the pyramid. We wish every team the best of luck and thank BUET for supporting this initiative.”
Following the regional finals, one winning team from each host city will move into a summer business incubator, where participants will receive mentorship, advisory and strategic planning as they create prototypes and set-up to launch their new social business. The final round of competition will be hosted at the Clinton Global
Initiative annual meeting in September, where CGI delegates will select the annual Hult Prize winner. None other than President Bill Clinton himself will award the USD 1,000,000 Prize to the winning team.
“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.” – President Bill Clinton, Founder, William J. Clinton Foundation and 42nd President of the United States.
This Hult Prize at BUET event was organized by “Hult Prize at BUET Committee” in association with BUET Career Club and financially supported by Form Architects, Designers and Engineers.
The Hult Prize is a start-up accelerator for social entrepreneurship, which brings together the brightest college and university students from around the globe to solve the world’s most pressing issues. The annual initiative is the world’s largest student competition and crowd-sourcing platform for social good, and has been funded by the Hult family since its inception in 2009. To learn more, visit www.hultprize.org.
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of the the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date, CGI members have made more than 2,500 commitments, which are already improving the lives of more than 430 million people in over 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued at $87.9 billion.