PRESS RELEASE: De La Salle University selected to host Hult Prize

De La Salle University Selected to Host Local Edition of Hult Prize Competition as Students Address President Bill Clinton’s Challenge and Go Head-to-Head for US$1M. 

The Hult Prize Foundation is a start-up accelerator for budding young social entrepreneurs emerging from the world’s universities. Named as one of the top five ideas changing the world by President Bill Clinton and TIME Magazine, the annual competition for the Hult Prize aims to create and launch the most compelling social business ideas—start-up enterprises that tackle grave issues faced by billions of people. Winners receive USD1 Million in seed capital, as well as mentorship and advice from the international business community.

The Hult Prize is offered in partnership with Former US President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative. It is hosted and supported by Hult International Business School and is generously funded by Swedish entrepreneur Bertil Hult and his family. It has been called the “Nobel Prize for Students” by media outlets worldwide.

Open to universities, colleges and students on every continent, the Hult Prize has grown to become the world’s largest student movement for social good. It is also the largest student competition on the planet and is the world’s largest crowdsourcing platform. Thousands of college and university students from 140+ countries participate each year and since its inception, participants have represented nearly 1,000 institutions of higher education. Competing schools included Stanford, Harvard, INSEAD, Hult International Business School, NYU, Columbia, American University of Beirut, London Business School, Hitotsubashi, St. Petersburg, and Tel-Aviv University. Nearly all of the Financial Times’ Top 100 MBA programs participate.

This year, fellow Lasallian Darrel Francis Luistro will be leading the Hult Prize at De La Salle University initiative. De La Salle University is one among the only three Philippine Universities and the 130 universities around the globe that Hult has granted the opportunity to organize a Hult Prize @ event this year and it is a first for our university. When asked what made him accept the opportunity of being the first ever campus director for Hult Prize @ DLSU, Darrel, also on his senior year as a financial management student, answered: “I knew from the beginning that being a campus director for the Hult Prize @ DLSU will be a demanding responsibility but I accepted it wholeheartedly, nonetheless. I welcomed the challenge because I really wanted to bring this prestigious competition in our university. Given that De La Salle University is one of the best business schools and among the top 4 universities in the Philippines, I believe that the Hult Prize will definitely be a good opportunity for the institution to make its presence be more known to the world and for Lasallians to be able to apply what they have learned in school not just to get a good career but also to create something that would actually help address the global issues that we are facing as a generation. Ultimately, I want to inculcate in the minds of Lasallians what we are always reminded to be in school, that we are not just ordinary Lasallians; rather, we are Lasallian achievers for God and Country.”

Hult Prize @ DLSU will serve as the First Round of the competition. Each year, a critical social problem is personally selected by President Bill Clinton and he also issues the challenge question that participants must solve through the creation of their start-ups for social good. Teams of 3-4 students are to develop an innovative start-up enterprise that would eradicate the problem. At least 10 teams will be competing in DLSU and the winning team will automatically advance to compete in one of five regional finals happening across the world in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai and a local panel of judges will select one winning team from each host city. The Regional winners then move on-to a boot-camp style accelerator with top-notch facilities, known as the “Hult Prize Accelerator,” where they will be constantly mentored by game-changing entrepreneurs as they create prototypes and set-up to launch their new social business. A final round of competition will be hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative at the Annual Meeting in September, where CGI delegates will select a winning team to be awarded the $1,000,000 prize by President Clinton himself.

Hult Prize at De La Salle University is now accepting sponsorships and the applications for competitors will open on October 1, 2015.

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