Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition

APPLY TO GSEC 2012 by November 9, 2011!

NEW THIS YEAR: travel scholarships will be awarded to eligible team members, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

GSEC is a leading-edge international social venture plan competition, where interdisciplinary student teams from around the world propose creative, commercially viable businesses aimed at reducing poverty in the developing world.

From innovative sanitation solutions in Kenya, to solar-powered modular power generators in Papua New Guinea, to prick-less anemia scanners in India, GSEC business plans demonstrate the power of business to create sustainable, positive change to some of the world’s most challenging social problems.

Each year, GSEC brings the world to UW: semi-finalist student teams from around the globe are invited to Seattle for GSEC Week. Teams visit regional companies, receive expert coaching, present their business ideas to 400+ professionals, and compete for monetary prizes.

GSEC 2012 will award at least $30,000 in prizes, including a GSEC grand, global health, and Information & Communication Technology (ICT) prize!

The professional support to GSEC is unparalleled: annually more than 200 experts participate as mentors, judges, and sponsors. We welcome this invaluable support, from individuals at organizations like Costco, Gray Ghost Ventures, Microsoft, PATH, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle International Foundation, the Grameen Foundation, and more. Learn more.

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Stories We're Watching

Remittances: Over the sea and far away

Economist - Special Report - Thu, 05/17/2012 - 08:05
For consumers who want to “wire” money to some far corner of the world, not much has changed since the days of the Old West. If you try to send a small amount of money from America to the Philippines, say, or Mexico, you will probably have to queue at a neighbourhood money-transfer agent and pay a fee that could easily reach 10% of the value of the remittance.

Mobile payments: A wealth of wallets

Economist - Special Report - Thu, 05/17/2012 - 08:05
Turn left off the main reception to PayPal’s offices in San Jose, open a nondescript door and you step into a garish living room dominated by a flat-screen television. This is a laboratory for what PayPal calls “couch commerce”: people sit in front of the television buying things with their mobile phones or tablet computers.

Expose, engage, empower: Connecting unlikely entrepreneurs in the mobile era

The infoDev team has taken a closer look at his and the other five finalists’ backgrounds, and we found some helpful insights about new sources of innovation, their promise, and their needs.

Breeding Wheat To Grow Where Other Plants Can’t

Fast Company's Co.Exist - Wed, 05/16/2012 - 14:00
We need to nearly double the amount of food we grow by mid-century if 9 billion people are going to have enough to eat. Yet most of the world’s prime farmland is already planted. The rest of the available land tends to lie under forests, or suffer from problems that keep it fallow. But feeding the world will mean redefining what is "arable" land.

More African nations hit agricultural investment target

Science and Development Network - Wed, 05/16/2012 - 10:45
Five more African countries have met the Maputo Declaration goal of investing ten per cent of their national budgets in agriculture.

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