DURHAM, N.H. - A team of University of New Hampshire students who proposed to start a mobile grocery store to help address the issue of "food deserts" and a Portsmouth resident who wants to increase road safety and decrease pollution of the state's waterways won the second annual New Hampshire Social Venture Innovation Challenge at the University of New Hampshire earlier this week.

Designed to be an "innovation accelerator," participants in the N.H. Social Venture Innovation Challenge develop original proposals for sustainable, market-based solutions to societal challenges. There was a track for community members and another for students in any college or university in the state. Eight teams in each track were chosen to compete in the finals.

"We were thrilled that 158 individuals representing 71 teams of college students and community members were inspired to design entrepreneurial concepts to tackle major local and global challenges such as climate change, access to clean water, food access and food waste, and community economic development," said Jan Nisbet, senior vice provost for research at UNH. "We know that effective solutions to society's most insidious problems will increasingly need to come from collaboration -- across private and public sectors and across fields and disciplines - and this challenge not only encourages it but shows what it can accomplish."

The winning student team, Amano's Mobile Grocery Stores, proposed creating vehicle-based stores to operate in close proximity to homes, offices and community centers for people who do not have easy access to traditional grocery stores. The UNH team members were Bradley and Shannon Calabro, master's students in business and social work respectively. They received a cash prize of $5,000.

The second and third-place student winners were LiquiNet, a team of UNH engineering students looking to solve the world water crisis with remote sensing devices, and PeeBus, also a team of UNH engineering students who proposed to remove urine from the wastewater stream and recycle it. They received prizes of $3,000 and $1,500 respectively. A team of students from Colby-Sawyer College in environmental science and biology, aiming to address recycling problems in their native Nepal, were also awarded a special prize by the judges. Timberland was a major supporter of the challenge, and made the student track prizes possible.

The winning community team, Andrew Jaccoma's Sensible Spreader Technologies, aims to increase road safety, reduce wasteful dissemination of deicers and lessen impact on the environment by integrating the latest technology into road maintenance equipment. Jaccoma received a first-place cash prize of $10,000, as well as 100 hours of consulting donated by PixelMEDIA, a leading New Hampshire-based digital experience agency and six months of membership in AlphaLoft, an organization dedicated to accelerating innovative start-up and early-stage companies. The cash prizes in the community track were made possible, in part, by the support of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.

The second and third-place winners are Harvest to Market and BankLocal. They received cash prizes of $5,000 and $2,500 respectively.
The Social Venture Innovation Challenge is organized and hosted at UNH by the Peter T. Paul College of Business & Economics, the Carsey School of Public Policy, the Sustainability Institute, NH EPSCoR and Net Impact UNH. To learn more about the winning teams go to http://www.unh.edu/socialbusiness/nh-social-venture-innovation-challenge#prizes.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.

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Caption: The winning community team, Sensible Spreader Technologies, led by Andrew Jaccoma, UNH Paul College MBA graduate (right). Also pictured is Michael Wilson, CFO and VP of Finance, New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and Fiona Wilson, Assistant Professor of Strategy, Social Entrepreneurship, and Sustainability at the University of New Hampshire Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics.
Photo Credit: Perry Smith Photography

Image to be downloaded:
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Caption: (left to right) The members of the winning student team, Amano's Mobile Grocery Stores, Bradley Calabro and Shannon Calabro, UNH graduate students in business and social work respectively, final round judge Matt Puckett, CFO, Timberland, and Fiona Wilson, Assistant Professor of Strategy, Social Entrepreneurship, and Sustainability at the University of New Hampshire Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics. Photo Credit: Perry Smith Photography

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