Ghanaian Students Win Social Innovation Challenge in USA

 Ghanaian students win social innovation challenge in USA 

Three Ghanaians win the 2018 Global Social Innovation Challenge at the University of San Diego 

Participants in the challenge take a social or environmental issue and identify gaps in the approaches currently deployed to solve it 

Three students from the Heritage Christian College (HCC), Ghana, won the 2018 Global Social Innovation Challenge held at the University of San Diego, United States of America (USA). The three Ghanaian students named, Evans Kwakye, Benjamin Nketsia and Austin Carboo emerged as winners after a great presentation on Ghana’s sanitation issues. The Ghanaian team known as “Team Charcoal” presented a solution to the sanitation challenge in Ghana by transforming human feces into charcoal. 

51 teams from across 27 Universities in 12 countries participated in the Global Social Innovation Challenge. The Challenge, which is an initiative of the University of San Diego's Centre for Peace and Commerce, is geared towards rewarding student-led social ventures focused on sustainable change. The Ghanaian team received $1,500 and $15,000 as seed funds for winning both the Audience Choice Award and the Overall Grand Prize in the General Track categories respectively.

At a press conference upon the arrival of the Ghanaian team, Benjamin Nketsia, a member of Team Charcoal, stated that the reason behind their win was for them to help solve the sanitation issues in Ghana. He furthered on to say that "The initiative was introduced to us by one of our team members, after which we researched into it and realized that some companies were using excreta for bio gas and fertilizer, but looking at the amount being generated daily in Accra, we noticed that there were still more waste and that was why we decided to come in and contribute our quota.”

He added that the team is in partnership with some reputable number of companies who will assist them in case of any technicality. Mr. Alexander Asmah, mentor of Team Charcoal stated that the team focused on charcoal generation because charcoal is widely used even outside the continent and this will help lessen the cutting down of trees for the usage of charcoal and that the team’s goal after the win is to find investors to make their innovation a reality.

Source: YEN News