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SEVEN Fund Awards $50,000 in Enterprise Based Solutions to Poverty Essays Competition
Compelling student essays discuss networks of productivity
February 7, 2008—CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS—The Social Equity Venture Fund — SEVEN — is proud to announce the winners of its Inaugural Student Essay Competition. The five student winners include Karina Robson of Harvard Divinity School and Gregory Robson of the Harvard Extension School, who co-wrote the winning essay in the graduate category; and three undergraduate winners, Luke Bueche of Thomas Aquinas College; Clare Halpine of Mount Allison University; and Pin-Quan Ng of Columbia University.
The winners, selected through a competitive review process that included a jury of leading business executives and academics, were chosen for their compelling analysis of enterprise-based solutions to poverty. Students addressed the question: "Poverty can be regarded as a matter of exclusion from networks of productivity, and not simply as having an unequal portion of what is imagined to be number of economic goods. In that sense, ending worldwide poverty is business. Describe enterprise based solutions to poverty in this context.".
"This competition rewards innovators and future thought leaders who understand that ending poverty is serious business. We seek to inspire students to think about poverty from different angles," said Andreas Widmer, co-founder of the SEVEN Fund.
The essay competition was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
Competition Winners
Graduate Essay Competition
Greg and Karina Robson
Greg and Karina Robson are graduate students at Harvard University, where Greg is studying Government and Karina is studying Theology and Ethics. After meeting as undergraduates at Vanderbilt University, they married and undertook an independent study of several fields while living in Italy, Poland, and Pittsburgh. They are now graduate tutors at Harvard’s Winthrop House and have tutored at the Harvard Bridge to Learning and Literacy program. Upon completion of their master’s degrees in 2008, Greg and Karina plan to go on to law school and doctoral work in theology, respectively. They will study philosophy in the intervening year.
Greg Robson is originally from Schaumburg, IL, and played Division I-A college football at Vanderbilt as a full-scholarship student-athlete. There, he double-majored in Economics and Human and Organizational Development (with a specialization in Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness). Greg interned at Merrill Lynch and Legg Mason Wood Walker and won the Best Senior Thesis Award in his major. At Harvard, he is co-founder and president of a pre-law society and a law and philosophy roundtable. In summer 2007, Greg authored reports on legal and public policy issues for a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently a teaching assistant for a course on "The United Nations, Peacebuilding, and the Future of the State."
Karina Robson (née Cummings) grew up in Houston, TX. She was a Strayhorn Honors Scholar at Vanderbilt and a junior-year inductee into Phi Beta Kappa. In addition to double-majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science (with Psychology and Spanish minors), she was an Engineering Leadership Program intern at National Instruments and a founding member and vice-president of the Vanderbilt Catholic Council. She is now a Harvard Presidential Scholar, "for commitment to public service." Ultimately, Greg and Karina look forward to contributing to the world as scholars and professionals, and hope to work with impoverished communities abroad prior to completing their schooling.
>Click here to view an excerpt of the
essay.
Undergraduate Essay Competition
Luke Bueche
Luke Bueche is a Freshman at Thomas Aquinas College studying for a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts. He was home schooled through twelfth grade, during which time he participated in speech and debate, winning several awards, as well as playing forward on his high school basketball team. He also studied Latin, and was awarded two "Cum Laude" awards for his high scores in the National Latin Exam. Further, Luke plays the piano, and has ranked among the top performers in the annual testing run by the Michigan Music Teachers Association. Luke enjoys doing projects around his home, and has tried his hand at everything from beekeeping to auto repair, to even constructing a giant trebuchet with the help of his friends. Currently, besides studying hard, Luke is involved in sports and music at college, and hopes, through his education, to refine his thinking and rhetorical skills.
>Click here to view an excerpt of the essay.
Clare Halpine
Clare Halpine is a third year student in the Fine Arts program at Mount Allison University. A native of Canada, Clare has spent the past few summers working with the World Youth Alliance in New York. Through the WYA training, her understanding of issues related to poverty and development has been increased, along with the recognition that solutions must be based on the foundation of the dignity of each person. In 2007 Clare traveled to Mexico to apply the philosophical and theoretical knowledge of the WYA to a grassroots project working with the indigenous Mazahua people in rural communities. This summer Clare will be returning to Mexico City to attend the International AIDS Conference with the WYA to advocate a person-centered solution. Clare is a varsity athlete and a Millennium Scholar.
>Click here to view an excerpt of the essay.
Pin-Quan Ng
Pin-Quan Ng is a sophomore at Columbia University in New York City, majoring in Economics and Political Science. A native of Singapore, Pin-Quan fulfilled his term of national service in the Singapore Armed Forces before starting college in the United States, where he is an active participant in microfinance and social enterprise organizations, and has worked for a management consulting firm in Singapore and a Washington foreign policy think-tank. His academic interests are in market systems, civil liberties, and international development, for which he has been awarded grant funding to pursue his research. He has also published op-eds and essays on these topics that have won various awards, most recently from the Japan Foreign Trade Council. Pin-Quan aspires to a career in the international development field, and hopes to work towards peace, prosperity and freedom in Asia and across the world.
>Click here to view an excerpt of the essay.
Judges
Al Chase: CEO, White Rhino Partners
Bob Leavitt: CEO, Pastry Arts
Joe Forgione: CEO, Mvalent
Eric Melin: President, Spidersplat Consulting
John G. Carlson: CEO and Founder, System Change
Rodolpho Rivarol PhD: Professor, Universidad Austral — Argentina
Tarek Nabhan: Vice President, International Executive Service Corps
François Geinoz: Executive Director, Limmat Foundation
John Budnik: CEO, Budnik Group
Michael Pakaluk, PhD: Professor, The Catholic University of America
Gabriela Artarvia: Communications Officer, Ecologic
Kateryna Cuddeback, PhD: Professor
Joanne Grande: Director, Tufts University
Patrick Kabanda: Faculty, Philips Academy
Karl Wirth: Director, Redhat
Bob Hadden: Entrepreneur
Raghu Nath: Vice President of Sales and Marketing, IntruGuard
Elizabeth Hooper: SEVEN Fund
Michael Fairbanks: SEVEN Fund
Andreas Widmer: SEVEN Fund
Original Essay Competition
Call for the Inaugural SEVEN Fund Student Essay Competition
On Dec 7, 2007 – The SEVEN Fund has extended the submission deadline of its inaugural Student Essay Competition. The competition will award three (3) undergraduate student prizes of US$10,000 each and one (1) graduate student prize of US$20,000. The new submission deadline is January 20, 2008 at midnight Eastern Standard Time (EST).
• Read the original Press Release for the essay competition
About the SEVEN Fund
SEVEN (Social Equity Venture Fund) is a virtual non-profit entity run by entrepreneurs Michael Fairbanks and Andreas Widmer whose strategy is to markedly increase the rate of diffusion of enterprise-based solutions to poverty. We do this by targeted investment that fosters thought leadership through books, films and websites; supporting role models - whether they are entrepreneurs or innovative firms - in developing nations; and shaping a new discourse in government, the press and the academy around private-sector innovation, prosperity and progressive human values. The SEVEN fund was established through a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
About the John Templeton Foundation
The John Templeton Foundation (www.templeton.org) serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in the areas engaging life's biggest questions. These questions range from explorations into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness and creativity.
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.
