We are excited to officially announce that Duke has been awarded $10M by the US Agency for International Development to launch the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke!
This award is part of a new initiative of USAID, the Higher Education Solutions Network, which aims to leverage the power of universities to create breakthrough development solutions. The Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD) is a global health development lab that identifies and supports the growth of solutions to global health challenges in low- and middle-income countries.
To learn more, read Duke’s press release and USAID’s news release.
Representatives of CASE, including Executive Director Matt Nash and second year student Liz Charles, are currently representing Duke in Washington, DC for the Higher Education Solutions Network launch. At a meeting at the State Department, Secretary Clinton mused on the potential power of the network:
“Here’s an example of how it could work: An entrepreneur at Berkeley discovers a groundbreaking innovation to bring clean drinking water to low-income families, but she needs to take it to scale. So the network connects her to researchers at Duke who have expertise in accelerating and scaling up solutions, and together, they grow her business so her work benefits hundreds of thousands, even millions of people.”
The CASE team is thrilled to have the opportunity to leverage our expertise in social entrepreneurship, scaling and impact investing to help launch this new initiative. We look forward to working with our partners: the International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD) at Duke’s School of Medicine, and the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI), in collaboration with the Developing World Healthcare Technology Lab (DHT-Lab) at the Pratt School of Engineering and Durham-based Investors’ Circle, the world’s oldest, largest and most successful early-stage impact investing network.
To learn more about SEAD, visit www.DukeSEAD.org. Congratulations to all!
