DURHAM, N.H. – From a field of nearly 80 entries, 17 finalists – nine in the student track and eight in the community track - were selected to advance in the 2016 New Hampshire Social Venture Innovation Challenge. The finalists will compete in the live round Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016, beginning at 8:30 a.m. in Holloway Commons at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about each team in these videos.

In addition, UNH’s annual Social Innovator of the Year will be awarded to Joe Keefe, president and chief executive officer of Pax World Funds. Keefe will engage in a keynote dialogue with Deborah Merrill-Sands, dean of the Peter T. Paul College of Business & Economics, beginning at 11:30 a.m. in the Memorial Union Building’s Strafford Room on “The Role of the Financial Markets in Achieving Gender Equality and Economic Growth.”

All events on Dec. 1 are free and open to the public but space is limited and registration is required. The finalists will compete for $27,500 in cash prizes, plus in-kind prizes worth more than $35,000. 

The finalist teams in the student track include undergraduate and graduate students with a diverse set of majors including business, engineering and life sciences and agriculture. The teams’ ideas span a diverse set of issues including underprivileged children, energy efficiency, homelessness, oncology care, shrimp farming, waste reduction, renewable energy, anthropogenic nitrogen inputs, and opportunities for veterans. Finalist teams include students from UNH, Saint Anselm and Plymouth State.

Finalist teams for the community track proposed ventures spanning issues as diverse as sexual assault, drinking water safety, waste reduction, mental health/suicide prevention, broadband access, and urban parking. The community track this year includes a team of high school students from Phillips Exeter Academy. 

Major supporters of the challenge include Alpha Loft, CCA Global, Kennebunk Savings, New Hampshire Businesses for Social Responsibility, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, Pierce Atwood, PixelMEDIA and Timberland. The final round will be judged by a panel of social venture experts, including notable New Hampshire leaders, as well as judges from outside the state.

An annual signature program of UNH, the Social Venture Innovation Challenge (SVIC) engages aspiring and practicing student and community social entrepreneurs in designing novel, sustainable, business-orientated solutions to some of society’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. The SVIC is an idea-stage competition with the goal of inspiring innovative, solution-orientated thinking and providing a forum to shine a light on these ideas.

The program is a collaborative, interdisciplinary event, organized at UNH by the Center for Social Innovation and Enterprise, and co-hosted by the Carsey School of Public Policy, NH EPSCoR, the Peter T. Paul College of Business & Economics, UNH Sustainability Institute, UNHInnovation, and Net Impact UNH.