A team of four RHU students, Hiba Al Dah, Bothaina Al Halabi, Mounir Al-Khayat, and Mohammad Traboulsi, now has the chance to win the 2019 Hult Prize national and regional finals after being crowned the winner of the RHU Hult Prize campus event January 19.

Team ViVert was one of the 8 RHU teams that were given 10 minutes to pitch their ideas tackling Hult Prize 10th Anniversary Challenge Youth Unemployment for a startup that could create 10,000 jobs for young workers in 10 years. The top three teams, ViVert, X, and Creative Wave, were chosen by RHU renowned jury members of business experts including Ms. Maya Al Kadi, Deputy General Manager BLOM Bank Invest, Mr. Mohamad Jabri, Executive Director of Training and Development Central Bank of Lebanon, Mr. Alaa Majzoub CEO and Founder Majzoub Production House, Mr. Basel Jalal Eddine, CEO and Founder of Cherpa-io. All three teams received the Hult Prize winner certificates signed by Hult Prize Founder Mr. Ahmad Al Ashkar and former US President Mr. Bill Clinton from RHU President, Dr. Makram Suidan. 

Following the Lebanese national anthem, RHU Campus Director, Mr. Khaled Zaatari, invited Dr. Suidan to deliver his welcome note. Dr. Suidan referred to the big success that the RHU team Heatechs achieved by being the winner of the 2018 Hult Prize Lebanon event, a thing that had a big impact on RHU.

Ms. Maya Al Kadi then delivered a word pointing out to BLOM Bank’s commitment to empowering youth and foster their talents. "You should not give up, you should work hard, and you have to look for ideas, resources, and explore all the possible avenues, to change your idea from the status of an idea to become a success. It is you and your belief that make it happen," she said.

The teams Gifty, ViVert, SegraLink, Yadak, Unoteqh, Creative Wave, the Bright Future, and X presented their ideas. The jury members deliberated the ideas and chose the winner teams. Following the lunch break, RHU President awarded certificates to the judges and the organizing members and RHU Campus Director announced the winner team and the first and second runner ups. Dr. Suidan expressed his pride saying “You made me feel very proud listening to your ideas.” Group photos were taken on stage and outside the Conference Hall.

In summary, HULT Prize was initiated in 2009 by an enterprising MBA student at Hult International Business School named Ahmad Ashkar who had a compelling idea that of leveraging the crowd to generate startup ideas from young people to sustainably solve the world’s most critical social challenges. Through the help of Hult, he acted on it. Today, the Hult Prize is the world’s biggest engine for the launch of for-good, for-profit startups emerging from university with over 2500 staff and volunteers around the world. In nearly a decade, the movement has deployed more than $50M of capital into the sector and mobilized more than one million young people to re-think the future of business as it continues to breed disruptive innovation on college and university campuses across 100 plus countries. The Hult Prize Foundation has been called the ”Nobel Prize for Students” and has been featured in a TIME Magazine Cover Story highlighting the “Top 5 Ideas Changing the World.”

To watch the video follow this link.