Title:
Business Students Compete to Solve Global Problems
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Hult International Business School has campuses in
Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai.
The Hult Global Case Challenge is a competition
based on the idea that solving world problems
requires a good business plan. Teams compete for
prizes of one million dollars to help an
organization with efforts to solve problems like
hunger, poverty and disease. A Hult student, Ahmad
Ashkar, created the challenge for teams from
business schools around the world. This year's
challenge deals with poverty. Teams will compete to
develop business plans for three nongovernmental
organizations. SolarAid works on energy projects in
east and southern Africa. Habitat for Humanity
builds low-cost housing. And One Laptop Per Child
builds computers for governments in developing
countries to supply to poor communities. That group
is taking part in the competition for the second
time.David Batley from SolarAid says his group works
with local entrepreneurs to bring power from the sun
to rural communities. "I think the winning team will
be one that uses a combination of really innovative
thinking and taking account of the practicalities of
operating in Africa and the challenges that that
represents." Sandy Parakilas took part in the first
competition in two thousand nine. The challenge that
year was to help an organization reach one hundred
million people in five years. One of the three top
prizes went to his team from Carnegie Mellon
University for their business plan for One Laptop
Per Child. "They were struggling with competition
from Microsoft and Intel. And they were having
trouble basically making money. So it was a great
opportunity for some business students to come in
and create some ideas for a not-for-profit to be
more profitable, essentially." Howard McNally is
chief executive officer of the Hult Global
Challenge. He says, "It's the equivalent of about
twenty thousand hours of consulting advice from the
world's smartest, youngest people." Mr. McNally says
the students learn about world problems and the
opportunities that might be available for them in
the market. "And it's also a tremendous opportunity
for the NGOs that we're working with to get the kind
of advice that they're going to get about their
vision and their goals." The five Hult campuses will
hold regional competitions in February. Finalists
will be chosen in New York in April. For VOA Special
English, I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
