2020/1/14

The Kyoto University of Foreign Studies has been selected to host the On-Campus round for the 2020 Hult Prize Challenge for the first time. The event took place on Sunday, December 8th, and was attended by over 40 students who cheered for the three teams that competed.

The Hult Prize is a business-plan competition for college students to tackle social challenges. Every year, former U.S. President Bill Clinton announces a theme based on Sustainable Development Goals, and this year’s theme was “Build Startups That Have a Net Impact on Environment with Every Dollar Earned”.

The winning team, “SUWIMMI”, is comprised of four 1st-year students of the Department of Global Studies. They presented their business proposal that conserves the environment by producing activated carbon from fruits and vegetables and thus decreasing the amount of food waste in the process. The judges praised their idea as “highly innovative.” The team will advance to compete in the Hult Prize Regional Summit scheduled in spring 2020.

The contest is also known as “the Nobel Prize for students”. The students who planned and administered the On-Campus preliminaries were three 2nd-year students of the Department of Global Studies: Hibiki Maeda, Manami Miyatake, and Naru Kosugi. Determined, they said, “we started out from scratch and our efforts finally came to fruition. We will revamp our team for next year to help the rise of changemakers.”

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