NDU advances to the regional finals of the “Hult Prize Challenge.”
Once again, the Hult Prize Challenge gives young entrepreneurs the opportunity to use the platform of one of the world’s leading international competitions to propose innovative business models aimed at solving social problems. This year’s challenge titled, "Refugees - Reawakening Human Potential," aims to restore the dignity and rights of millions of refugees left stateless due to severe political and environmental conditions.
The Hult Prize has been known as the ‘Nobel Prize for Students’ and offers a non-comparable opportunity offering both exposure and financial reward. The Swedish entrepreneur Bertil Hult and his family, in partnership with former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, established it.
Dedicated and enthusiastic NDU students with social entrepreneurship talents put forward solutions to the worldwide refugee crisis. The teams competing at the University level included undergraduates, graduates, and alumni. Three teams won the votes of our honorable judges, who were: Judge John Azzi, reputable for his fair judgment and social activism; Suzy Hoayek, coordinator at the Ministry of Energy and Water on the “Lebanon Crisis Response Plan;” and Gilbert Doumit, managing partner and consultant at Beyond Reform & Development Group.
The winning team — Melanie Abou Khalil, Ghiwa Dagher, and Christelle Haswany — presenting “Our New Taste” expressed their feelings. In a joint statement, they said, “We are an ordinary group of university students that believe in two small words: hope and change. We have hope for the future, and we will work as hard as possible to achieve change. By embracing passion, ambition, and motivation, we can impact the world and make our dark future a little brighter.” The team has qualified to participate in March 2017 in the Hult Prize regional competition.
“An Undiscovered Road” presented by Fadlo Ailabouni, Evone Reaidi, and Luna Saad won second place. “We are a group that has a business mind and care about social issues. The Hult Prize Challenge gave us a step forward to project our thoughts into a competition. We want to build cheap satellite phones so that refugees can use them when they have no access to the Internet. The satellite phones have a built-in application that will help them find people like them, restaurants that offer free food, and an online teaching forum, so they can teach their languages and make money. Finally, we designed an electric circuit that will help them get electricity through urine so that they will be able to charge their phones in the absence of electricity,” explained Ailabouni, the team captain.
Finally, third place winners — Elias Haddad, Rabih Naja, Bassel Tarabay, and Maryam Nassif — said in a joint statement, “Being concerned about the unsustainable urban development that usually follows a crisis, we, in ‘Nothing Is Lost,’ propose a social enterprise. This enterprise will responsibly develop the lost properties of refugees in return for some shares with the help of a platform, which serves to involve the public in the redevelopment process making it a communal effort. The platform would also double as a tool that would allow us to utilize untapped potential by trying to employ capable individuals in the redevelopment of those properties.”
The Hult Prize Challenge 2017 was hosted at NDU with the support the Dr. Jennifer Abou Hamad, Chairperson of the Department of Management and Marketing at Faculty of Business Administration and Economics (FBAE). The project was coordinated by Ghady Geagea and supervised by Dr. Souha Fahed, DMM.