University of Portsmouth students compete for one million dollar prize money in United Nations challenge

The Hult Prize is an international initiative in which students from around the world develop develop social enterprises to compete for $1m from the United Nations (UN).

Students from 3,000 universities across 121 countries firstly take part in individual campus competitions for the honour of going through to the regional final. Teams are challenged based around the UN’s sustainable development goals for 2030.

The challenge for this year’s students was to ‘transform food into a vehicle of change for good via creating jobs, stimulating economies, reimagining supply chains and improving the outcomes for 10m people’.

The students had a month to find teams, develop their ideas and create pitches to present their enterprises in the final in a dragons-den style competition.

This month (December) saw seven teams from the University of Portsmouth compete in the campus final to go forward as the university’s regional finalist.

The campus winners were Team BHBC consisting of budding entrepreneurial students Brian Beukes, James Clarke, Josh Holloway and Harry Buckle. The team created a society which harnessed new technology to improve food production and allowed poorer communities the chance to trade waste in return for nutritional foods.

Team member Brian said: ‘I really can’t believe we actually won and I this proves that if you put in the hard work, it really does pay off. Bring on the regionals.’

UN representative and judge Claudio Assenti added: ‘It was a fantastic evening with deserving students and innovative ideas. I think if our youngest generation will continue with this passion and this motivation, we will have a bright future ahead.’

Due to Covid restrictions this year’s competition pitches were delivered to the judges as a virtual online event which was co-ordinated by student and campus director Victoria Yates.

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Victoria said: ‘Being the campus director this year for the Hult Prize has been a challenging but absolutely incredible experience, encouraging students to start social enterprises to change the food system for good and to change the lives of people around the world.

‘I want to work in the UN myself one day and so being part of this competition partnered with the UN, and connecting with professionals who work for the UN is hopefully paving a way for my future in the development sector.’

The winning team are now one step closer to competing in September for the $1m prize at the UN’s New York headquarters.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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