Designing Solutions for Poverty Competition
In conjunction with the Beall New Venture Competition and Big Ideas @ Berkeley
2016-2017 WINNERS ANNOUNCED
- Esqalate
- Loy Loy
- Pure Game
Learn more about this year’s finalists HERE.
2016-2017 SEMI-FINALISTS ANNOUNCED
Learn more about this year’s semi-finalists HERE.
The Finalist Presentations and Reception is open to the public and on THURSDAY, MAY 4 from 5:30pm to 7:30 p.m. at the Porter Colloquia Room and Terrace at The Paul Merage School of Business. Interested community members and business leaders may RSVP to Ellen Kern at ekern@uci.edu.
OVERVIEW & ELIGIBILITY
The 3rd Annual Designing Solutions for Poverty Competition, hosted by the Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation, is a stand-alone award that will go to the individual or team that best harnesses an innovative idea to make a social impact. The award is open to the entire UCI community, including students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members.
SUBMISSIONS & PROCESSES
Applicants must first submit their idea through our online portal. We welcome any idea with a social impact element. Ideas may be early stage. Applicants do not need to be part of a team to submit their idea.
Ideas submitted by FEBRUARY 10 will be eligible for mentoring and partnership support through MARCH 15. The final deadline to submit ideas is MARCH 15.
NOTE: Applicants who are also entering the Beall New Venture Competition must submit concept papers by January 30 and final pitch decks by May 5.
JUDGING CRITERIA
The award will go the team that best connects an innovative and sustainable solution to a poverty-related social challenge.
Concept papers and presentations will be judged by a separate panel of judges on the following criteria:
- INNOVATION: The extent to which the idea presented is a novel, innovative, or creative solution for the proposed problem. (40% of overall score)
- POTENTIAL FOR IMPACT: The extent to which the proposed project addresses a pressing problem, and the extent to which your team provides sufficient statistics and research for the reader to understand the problem. (20% of overall score)
- VIABILITY: The extent to which the proposed project appears viable, given the project description, the team’s qualifications, and the team’s understanding of the market or community needs. (15% of overall score)
- SUSTAINABILITY: The extent to which the proposed product or service can be financially sustained. (15% of overall score)
- QUALITY: The extent to which the proposal is professional, persuasive, well written, and well organized. (10% of overall score).
Ideas should be in line with the following categories (from Big Ideas):
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- Art & Social Change: Create an innovative arts project that meaningfully engages with issues of advocacy, justice, and community-building.
- Energy & Resource Alternatives: Encourage the adoption of energy and resource alternatives that are sustainable and have the potential for broad impact.
- Financial Inclusion: Propose novel products, services, tools or mechanisms that address unmet needs of the financially underserved, or help extend existing services.
- Food Systems: Encourage the development of innovative solutions that address challenges and lead to improvements in the global food systems.
- Global Health: Develop an action-oriented interdisciplinary project that would alleviate a global health concern among low-resource communities.
- Hardware for Good: Describe plans to develop an innovative hardware technology, or design a technology-led solution that uses an existing hardware/product in a novel way.
- Improving Student Life: Develop an initiative to improve the UCI student experience or that encourages students to engage and improve the surrounding community.
- Information Technology for Society: Describe an innovative project that would demonstrate the capacity of IT to address a major societal issue.
FUNDING
Grant funding of up to $20,000 will be awarded to the selected idea(s)/businesses to be taken to the next level.
Read more about proposals from previous cycles HERE.