SEVEN Fund Announces Winners of “New Models of Development” Competition
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS —The Social Equity Venture Fund — SEVEN —
is pleased to announce the winners of its 2009/2010 "New Models of Development" student essay competition. The grand prize of $10,000 was awarded to two winning essays. Jennifer Chong, a senior at Dartmouth College, and Petra Genchova Staynova, a second year student at Pembroke College - Oxford University, shared the prize. The winners were selected through a competitive review process that included a jury of journalists and experts on enterprise solutions to poverty. More than 700 entries were received from 50 countries.
Authors were asked to review "Rwanda Rising: A New Model of Economic Development," an article in Fast Company magazine by journalist Jeff Chu, who served on the jury. Submissions discussed innovative models of for-profit development from around the globe. Chong's essay tells the story of her experience working with Shokay, an enterprise that aims to bring yak fibers to the international marketplace from rural, impoverished Asian farming communities. Staynova's essay, entitled “Rock the Cradle of Democracy: Kavarna’s Sunrise,” explores a Bulgarian municipality's journey to prosperity through the creation of an unlikely heavy metal mecca in Eastern Europe.
"These two essays embody the best of enterprise solutions to poverty: one uses the day-to-day facts of a rural community, only with a twist, and can be replicated all over the world; the other, is counter-intuitive, a one-of-a-kind solution served up with passion. Together, they bracket the possibilities for indigenous innovation to upgrade communities.” said Michael Fairbanks, co-founder of the SEVEN Fund.
Winners Profiles:
Entrepreneurs create products, services and jobs. They expand economies, improve people's lives, provide employment (high and rising wages) and bring about competition. A competitive environment, in turn, gives rise to efficiency, meritocracy and further innovations and entrepreneurial drive.
The potent combination of entrepreneurship and technological innovation can forge an environment that is conducive to further enterprise, involving even government policy in supporting entrepreneurship and innovation.
