Malaria project wins ChangeWorks competition

Sophomore Katie Guidera presents the Malaria Awareness Program in HaMakuya, South Africa.
Sophomore Katie Guidera presents the Malaria Awareness Program in HaMakuya, South Africa.

Undergraduate entrepreneurs competed Wednesday for seed money to launch socially-conscious ventures.

Four finalist teams presented at Duke Venture Forward’s second annual ChangeWorks social entrepreneurship pitch competition in Sheafer Theater Wednesday night. Following a presentation from keynote speaker Greg van Kirk, Ashoka Foundation Lemelson Fellow and the co-founder of the New Development Solutions Group, judges and voters awarded $5,000 in seed money to sophomore Katie Guidera and her venture, the Malaria Awareness Program in HaMakuya, South Africa.

“I don’t think the key to solving so many problems in our world is about creating a million social entrepreneurs,” van Kirk said. “It’s about learning about how to engage with others and understand what their problems are and come up with solutions together.”

Undergraduates were invited to post ideas for socially conscious start-ups on the program’s website, beginning Feb. 7. Visitors to the website voted for their favorite ideas, narrowing the pool to four finalists—including Counseling Orphans Promoting Empowerment, DukeSocial.com, FishCycle and the Malaria Awareness Program. At the competition, each team was given six minutes to present their idea to the panel of judges, with an additional six minutes allocated for a question and answer session.

The MAP proposal involves a peer-education program that conducts community education workshops in each of HaMakuya’s villages as well as a mosquito net production and distribution system to the peer-education program participants, local clinics and corner stores in the area. “MAP aims to build upon existing resources and interests to sustainably empower the community and promote awareness of malaria,” Guidera said, adding that HaMakuya suffers a substantial lack of resources and limited access to aid and education about the disease.

DukeSocial.com, presented by juniors Ross Tucker and Julia Huang, was awarded the $2,500 second place prize. In their presentation, Tucker and Huang said Duke suffers from a fractured sense of community, and it is difficult to connect like-minded students across campus.

DukeSocial.com claims to facilitate this problem by acting as the first social media hub designed to enhance Duke student life. Its three main components—discover, share and connect—serve to link students who might not otherwise mingle with one another. DukeSocial.com facilitates collaboration between like-minded students and aggregates resources to raise awareness about campus activity.

Finalist Counseling Orphans Promoting Empowerment, presented by junior Grace Zhou and senior Audrey Hu, strives to improve the health and well-being of orphans and vulnerable children in Naama, Uganda. It uses the Naama Millennium Primary school to identify and refer children for counseling and vocational training.

The other finalist, FishCycle, was presented by sophomores Mike Du, Albert Hu and William Li. FishCycle focuses on utilizing the byproducts of filleting fish—bones, organs, heads and tails. Typically, these bits are dumped into oceans, but this practice leads to significant environmental damage by increasing dissolved oxygen and phosphorous levels as well as choking algae colonies, the group noted. FishCycle’s solution is to ship Alaskan fish byproducts to China, where the demand is higher. The venture would include a processing plant in China with boiling and grinding capabilities, collecting as much as 25 percent of all fish products to distribute as animal feed or nutrient supplements.

Social entrepreneurship identifies a social problem and utilizes business principles in order to find and enact a solution, van Kirk said. It is not solely focused on ideology but rather embodies the social values that underlie each venture.

“If you try to do business... try to do it in the right way,” he said. “Think big picture but work on the little things.”

Van Kirk suggested that both the finalists and the audience “try-storm”— try different ventures repeatedly until one of them works out. The key, he noted, is developing a keen sense of empathy, learning about the field of interest and finding a specific niche in which to cultivate an idea.

“Social entrepreneurship and making a difference is really about believing in people before they even believe in themselves,” he said.

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