Date: 2016-12-28

The Hult Prize has recently announced the winning team from University of Ilorin that has advanced to the 8th annual regional finals of the competition.

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.

The Hult Prize is a crowd-sourcing platform for social good, named one of the top five ideas changing the world by President Bill Clinton and TIME Magazine. The innovative crowd-sourcing platform identifies and launches disruptive and catalytic social ventures that aim to solve the planet's most pressing challenges.

This year, the Hult Prize focused on finding solutions for the millions of people around the world affected by the global refugee crisis.–a challenge personally selected by President Bill Clinton.

The winning team members from University of Ilorin include, Kingsley Chinedu Oyinna, Amarachi Thaddyoparaocha and Stannislaus Ogunnowo.

The team competed in the Hult Prize at University of Ilorin event on the 10th of December, 2016 and built a solution to this year's challenge, "Reawakening Human Potentials-Building scalable & sustainable start-up enterprises that will restore the rights and dignity of 10million refugees by 2022."

The team will now move on to compete at the Hult Prize regional finals in March 2017, which are being hosted at one of Hult International Business School’s five campuses in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai. University of Ilorin will compete in Dubai.

Speaking on the success recorded by the team, its campus Director, Olorunjuwon Bell said it is their time to show the world that they could nourish idea and watch it grow.

"Every big company in the world today started with an idea (seed) and this is our time to show the world that we are ready to nourish this seed and watch it grow into the next big social enterprise."

CEO and Founder of the Hult Prize, Ahmad Ashkar, attributed the success of the competition to the global youth revolution, saying "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 those who are in most need. We wish every team the best of luck and thank University of Ilorin for supporting this initiative."

"Following the regional finals, one winning team from each host city will advance to an intensive 8-week summer business incubator, where they will receive mentorship, advisory and strategic planning as they create prototypes and set-up to launch their new social business.

"The final round of the competition will take place in September, where a jury panel 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.

Ashkar quoted the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton as saying "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."

The winning team requests the support of the public to travel to Dubai so as to launch and present their business plan to potential investors and world leaders. For sponsorship, kindly make all donations to Bello Olorunjuwon Olumide (GTBANK: 0177663168) or contact the campus director via 08174455430 or email: bello.olorunjuwon@gmail.com for other measures.