Winners Announced at Stanford E-Challenge and Fast Forward Fund

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Competitions and Fellowships

Published June 01, 2009 @ 09:11AM PT

We're approaching the tail end of the spring business plan and youth social innovator competition season, and have a few more results for this Monday morning.

The Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) E-Challenge competition is a $50,000 business plan competition that anchors a series of speakers, mentorship programs, and other activities designed to accelerate and improve. BASES and the E-Challenge were started about ten years ago by a group of Stanford engineers, but the program has since spread across disciplines and departments.

This year’s winners include the following: first place goes to HemorX, a medical device company with a better solution for hemorrhoids, and the tie for second place goes to Togetherville and Properat. Togetherville is a new child-friendly internet interface with community building and educational tools, and Properat is a system designed to “solve the email problem” by consolidating inboxes with mass email into easily readable formats.

The Fast Forward Fund is a new organization designed to catalyze peer-to-peer social investment among young people. A couple times a year, partner nonprofits that work with young social innovators nominate organizations that FFF should invest in. A group of student directors is trained by FFF to cull through the list of nominees to put together an investment portfolio that FFF then finds partners to fund. They are focused on four main issue areas: Climate Change & Energy, Poverty Alleviation, Public Health, Human Rights & Peace. The first four portfolio investments are:

Climate Change & Energy
Focus the Nation's Focus Fellowship Program trains and supports youth leaders from coal-dependent US states to develop and present their vision for clean energy solutions at COP15 climate treaty negotiations (Copenhagen, Denmark, December 2009); build intergenerational mentor relationships with clean energy professionals achieving tangible, replicable results in their communities, and report back an annual Town Hall event. Venture nominated by Clinton Global Initiative.

Poverty Alleviation
The Generation Project harnesses the ideas of donors to expand opportunities for high-need, lowincome K-12 student. Venture nominated by Teach for America.

Public Health
Mali Health Organizing Project promoting health change, not charity, MHOP assists slums in creating their own health care solutions, with the ultimate goal of engaging the government and the slum to invest in health and development without outside assistance. Venture nominated by Global Engagement Summit.

Human Rights & Peace
Public Stuff connecting people with local government through a user-friendly, online portal; great things can happen when everyone is involved. Venture nominated by Young Women Social Entrepreneurs (NY Chapter).