Posts Tagged ‘SFI’

OCAD’s Yogya Team Competing in Hult $1M Prize

Thursday, April 9th, 2015

The Yogya team of students of the Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) program at OCAD University is still competing to reach the finals of the $1Million Hult Prize. They are determined to help bring Early Childhood Education to 10 Million children in urban slums. Yogya means worthy as in “every child is worthy”. The team has engaged in the Hult on-line challenge and have put their project up for crowdfunding on Indiegogo. They need this seed money to prototype their solution and field test it. Now it’s a race against time. If they reach their goals in number of funders and in amount funded, they will get into the finals of the Hult Prize competition. Indeed, it is a project worthy of support. Please contribute what you can!

Hult 2015 – $1M Prize Competition

Friday, March 13th, 2015

This global competition is organized by the Hult Prize Foundation, a not-for-profit organization aiming at solving the planet’s biggest challenges with innovative ideas implemented through sustainable start-up social enterprises. Annual Hult Prize winners get USD1 million in seed funding to make their ideas reality. Although it was originally conceived to attract “the world’s brightest business minds”, it is seeing increasing numbers of multidisciplinary teams participating, including from many design schools.

This year’s challenge is about early childhood education in urban slums for children aged 0-6 years. The objective is to reach 10 Million children within 5 years. The competition is staged first at local and regional levels around the world. The six regional finalist teams attend in July and August a six-week program at the Hult Accelerator at the Hult Business School in Boston. They then compete in the global finals in an event attended by President Clinton where the winning team will be selected.

This year two teams from OCAD University’s Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) masters program participated in the local competition with about 22,000 submissions globally. The two teams moved to the regional finals.

Team Msana to Shanghai

 

 

 

 

Team YOGYA to San Francisco

 

Two OCADU teams at the Regional Finals

 

 

 

 

 

One team from the part-time SFI program team is currently in Shanghai while the other team from the SFI full-time program is currently in San Francisco. Each of them will be competing with about 250 regional candidates. We wish them both the best of luck!

A Week of Awards

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

This week two of the educational programs I have been involved with have received awards. First, the core curriculum of the new Design, Engineering & Commerce (DEC) College at Philadelphia University was recognized for its transformational nature and won the Core77 Design Award in Educational Initiative category. The jury commented on all finalists by video; the DEC segment is towards the end but may be worth watching to understand why the program won top honors.

Then the World Future Society announced its F:BL 2012 awards (Futures: BetaLaunch 2012) and I was thrilled to learn that the Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) Masters Program at OCAD University has been selected as one of the top future-oriented start-ups.

When innovators go into uncharted areas and design new solutions, they frequently can’t tell whether they were right or not about their innovation. It is only when their work is recognized by others that they can reduce uncertainty and feel on the right track. There is no better moment for innovators! Congratulations to the teams at DEC and SFI for their excellence.