Many UC Berkeley faculty and students are interested in addressing the toughest societal challenges of the 21st century, such as health, poverty alleviation, global warming, sustainability, human rights, and social justice.
In many instances, tackling these problems will require new or expanded collaborations between UC Berkeley and non-profit organizations or social enterprise, in the same way that UC Berkeley currently partners with companies to foster commercial innovation.
These partnerships might have a number of elements. For example:
The goals of a social enterprise help motivate a UC Berkeley research project.
A social enterprise is involved in deployment or scale-up of Berkeley technological or social innovation.
UC Berkeley researchers help provide rigorous, independent evaluation of the effectiveness of social enterprise.
UC Berkeley students work on projects that address needs of social enterprise as summer internships, capstone projects, independent study, etc.
UC Berkeley and social enterprise develop joint proposals to foundations, philanthropists, or government agencies to support the collaboration.
For this contest, students must propose a new or expanded collaboration with a non-profit or social enterprise, describing both the rationale for the partnership and short-term and longer-term opportunities. As part of this proposal, students may attach a letter of support from the relevant NGO or social enterprise.