Two teams of Middlebury Institute students, TucanTú (top) and “Learning Roots Network” (bottom) will compete in the regional finals of the annual Hult Prize competition in Boston and San Francisco on Saturday, March 14.
Sometimes dubbed the “Nobel Prize for Students,” the Hult Prize is a competition for teams of innovative students who are asked to come up with ideas to create a sustainable social enterprise that addresses a challenge posed each year by President Bill Clinton through the Clinton Global Initiative. The challenge for 2015 is to provide quality early education to 10 million children under age six in urban slums by 2020. A team from the Middlebury Institute reached the final round of the regional competition in San Francisco last year and was picked to participate in the seven-week Accelerator Program in Boston to build their prototype. The team, known as Salud2, is currently working on a launch of their project in Mexico City.
In part as a result of the great success of Salud2, the Middlebury Institute was one of the universities chosen to host an on-campus competition last fall. The Learning Roots Network team of Kelly Quackenbush MPA ’15, Noah Halton MPA ’15, Timothy Cunningham MAIPD ’16 and Katie Barthelow MPA/MAIEM ’16 advanced directly to the Regional Finals in San Francisco on March 14. They are very excited to deliver their pitch challenging dominant ideas about where knowledge comes from, who creates it, and what is considered valuable, at the event on Saturday. “We are going to examine what early childhood education means from a new perspective,” shares Kelly, “and synthesize that with our knowledge of holistic development.” She adds that they intend to demonstrate how they can serve the 10 million children living in urban slums and fill a market gap in the United States at the same time.
As is fitting for a vibrant intellectual community filled with people passionate about finding solutions to some of our greatest challenges, MIIS has another team competing in the regional finals of the Hult Prize in Boston this weekend. TucanTú is the brainchild of Laura Benoit MPA ’15, Derek Musial MBA ’15 and Jeanette Pelizzon MPA ’14, who submitted their idea for an innovative social enterprise the traditional way and beat out 20,000 other applicants to advance to the Regional Finals in Boston. After participating in the campus competition in November, the team went back to the drawing board with the input from the judges and came up with a new approach. “We have put a lot of time and energy into better understanding the needs of young children and how best to address them in a sustainable manner in the urban slum,” says Jeanette. Building on real-world work experience dealing with some of these issues on three continents, the team has added the theories and tools acquired at MIIS to come up with an innovative approach to the challenge.
The winning teams from the five Hult Regional Finals will be invited to attend the Accelerator Program to further develop their idea before presenting at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York in September. The grand prize winner will receive $1 million in seed funding.