Dec 23, 2020 | Press
This holiday season, our team has been highlighting our amazing student community and sharing stories of how they’re changing the world. But with the unprecedented twists and turns that 2020 has brought to us all, it’s become clear that these experiences have also shaped us all in new ways.
We asked high school students in our community how this year has shaped them and here’s what they had to say:
Q: What from 2020 will you take with you into 2021?
“I will take into 2021 my optimism and my hope that there is a better tomorrow. What I understood clearly from 2020 was that everything was going to be alright, no matter the condition or situation, everything was still going to be fine”. – Toluwalase O.
“Something I’ll take with me into 2021 is the reminder that when one door closes, another one will open. Sometimes it becomes necessary to remove old influences to create space for the new!” – Ashley L.
“2020 showed me the power of people. In this time of heightened isolation, people around me became more collaborative and supportive of each other. I hope this awareness of societal problems that had been ignored for years can continue into 2021.” – Chelsea Y.
“I’ll take my increased closeness with my family members with me to 2021. During the stay at home order, I was able to spend more time with my parents because we were all really busy before, but it’s nice that we got to bond before I leave for college next year.” – Sophia O.
Q: What clarity did you gain in 2020?
“I need to be more grateful. Fortunately, my family was not impacted by the pandemic, and my parents were able to continuously provide for me. However, several of my friends told me how their parents were laid off, on furloughs, or contracted the disease. Therefore, I realized I took for granted the position that I am in, and I learned to be more thankful and more appreciative.” – Akshara R.
“Not everything will go according to plan, but it will sort itself out in the future as long as you keep working at it.” – Mehar P.
“I gained more clarity on work-life balance. Before 2020, I did not realize the importance of having hobbies and activities to destress. With staying at home, I realized that it is really important to have activities that I enjoy.” – Sheryl H.
“I realized that the ability to adapt and change is more important than ever. Throughout 2020, whether it be schools or offices, everyone has had to adapt and change according to the circumstances. Before 2020, our lives were pretty routine, but 2020 turned everything on its head and it taught me about being open to more options and going with the flow.” – Soham J.
“2020 and all of its struggles have given me the opportunity to ‘spring clean’ my life in regards to school, my future and my relationships with others!” – Palpasha K.
From our community to you, wishing you an optimistic, hopeful, powerful, grateful and balanced 2021!
The Diamond Challenge 2021 submission deadline is just two weeks away. There’s still time to compete.
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About Horn Entrepreneurship
Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the University of Delaware’s creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement. Built and actively supported by successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders, Horn Entrepreneurship empowers aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs as they pursue new ideas for a better world.
Follow Horn Entrepreneurship @udhorn and check out our entrepreneurship competition for high school students @diamondchalleng.
Nov 20, 2020 | Press
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This holiday season, our team is highlighting our amazing student community and sharing stories of how they’re changing the world. Diamond Challenge alums, partners and supporters alike have had life-changing experiences participating in the Diamond Challenge. We invite you to share your experiences on social media so we can feature you! Be sure to tag @diamondchalleng, use the hashtag #DiamondsChangeTheWorld and post a picture showing us how you’re changing the world.
Since 2012, high school students from around the world have been developing new ways to shape our world, and submitting these ideas to the Diamond Challenge platform. Developing concepts for new business and social ventures allows them to put their hopes, dreams and passions into action and show the world the next generation’s inspiring talents.
Giving Tuesday
We affectionately call our participants Diamonds because they truly shine and bring their brilliance into the world through entrepreneurship. To make sure all students have the opportunity to become a Diamond, we invite you to help shape our world for the better by participating in our first-ever Giving Tuesday campaign. Your support means so much to our team and to the thousands of students who each year have a place to share their wildest dreams for a better tomorrow!
Give today
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About Horn Entrepreneurship
Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the University of Delaware’s creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement. Built and actively supported by successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders, Horn Entrepreneurship empowers aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs as they pursue new ideas for a better world.
Follow Horn Entrepreneurship @udhorn and check out our entrepreneurship competition for high school students @diamondchalleng.
Apr 1, 2020 | Press
At times like these, we find ourselves traversing new territory. When we realized that the writing was proverbially on the wall regarding our ability to host the 2020 Diamond Challenge Summit on the University of Delaware campus, our team never once questioned whether or not the show would go on. We felt compelled to deliver the best possible outcome, on time, to our students. Why? At a time when our worlds have been turned upside down and many of our regular routines and activities have been put on pause, we need to maintain connectivity and perpetuate the hope and inspiration that naturally aligns with entrepreneurship.
Our commitment to keeping the Diamond Challenge 2020 on schedule and delivering a quality experience to our global audience presented us with the ultimate entrepreneurial challenge. Our team had to come up with creative solutions to problems: how do we ensure our participants get to meet one another, learn of each other’s projects and connect with the amazing partners, judges and speakers we recruited? It took lots of brainstorming, meetings, emails, calls and post-it notes to adapt our three-day, in-person Summit to a three-week virtual experience. And we did it! Here’s a quick look into our pivot:
What we adapted:
- Pitching: Teams pivoted from live pitches to pre-recorded pitches. Because the Q&A part of pitching is so valuable, we brainstormed the most frequently asked questions and included them as a part of the semifinal round submission process.
- Judging: We transitioned from live judging panels to virtual panels utilizing our competition management platform. Judges will review, score and provide feedback to teams online.
- Team-Building: All team-building activities and design sprints planned for the Summit have been converted to virtual “meet-ups”, topically-based opportunities to connect with a variety of experts.
- Location: We will be broadcasting from our homes due to the quarantine.
- Delivery: We are utilizing Zoom to deliver all live content.
Core Experience Elements/What we kept (essentially) the same:
- Prizes: We’re maintaining our funding awards for the top three teams in each competitive track. New this year is the addition of topical prizes provided by innovative companies like Gore, Chemours and SAP. A team from each competitive track will be selected based on their concept’s alignment with company values (and will receive $1500 in funding!)
- Professional connections: Business leaders from notable companies such as Capital One, CSC and many more will join us as virtual judges, host meetups, and participante in our Awards Ceremony.
- Mentoring: All semifinalist teams are offered the opportunity to meet with qualified mentors between the time they qualify for the round and the Summit. Our team enhanced access to mentors by engaging additional mentors and providing more mentoring office hour opportunities. Teams now have more chances to foster new connections, develop their networks and improve their pitches!
- Keynotes: our two keynote speakers, Hazel Jennings from Instagram and Mitch Kick from SAP, each gave us a big, “YES” when we asked whether they’d be open to transitioning their delivery to a virtual platform. In addition to keynoting during the virtual experience, audience members will be able to ask live questions!
- Inclusion and equity: Now that we are not restricted by the barriers associated with traveling to the Summit, we have a greater opportunity to ensure all of our semifinalists have access to this special opportunity.
We are so grateful and excited to provide our student participants (more affably referred to as our “Diamonds”) with a valuable and positive experience, especially at a time when we’re collectively facing so much uncertainty.
To our Diamonds: Thank you for sticking with us as we transitioned to this new experience. You are our future and our future is BRIGHT!
Lastly, we want to provide a special thank you to our sponsors Capital One, CSC, SAP, Gore, our keynotes Hazel Jennings (Instagram), Mitch Kick (SAP), and to all of our community members for your support and comradery. With you, the world is even more brilliant!
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About Horn Entrepreneurship
Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the University of Delaware’s creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement. Built and actively supported by successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders, Horn Entrepreneurship empowers aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs as they pursue new ideas for a better world.
Follow Horn Entrepreneurship @udhorn and check out our entrepreneurship competition for high school students @diamondchalleng.
Dec 27, 2018 | Press, Students
Our partners in Diamond Challenge Pakistan hosted their preliminary rounds at the Girls High School “Hala” in February. Nine teams from 9th and 10th grades competed.The top 4 teams then presented their concepts to Mr. Javed Hussain, Executive Director of the Sindh Community Foundation. His feedback was very positive for all teams and he quickly recognized that the issues of a lack of computers and technology available to the students as well as the limited entrepreneurship education for female high school students in Pakistan was indeed a problem and that the Diamond Challenge was helpful in addressing this.
Even through these obstacles, a team comprised of Aliza, Konain, and Sidra, all in the 9th grade, placed first in the preliminary round. We are so excited to have the opportunity to meet them soon here in Delaware and learn more about their business concept and their lives in Pakistan.
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No matter where our Diamond Challenge alumni go, we are constantly amazed by how they continue to make an impact on the world for the better.
Would you like to be featured in our next highlight? Click here.
About Horn Entrepreneurship
Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the University of Delaware’s creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement. Built and actively supported by successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders, Horn Entrepreneurship empowers aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs as they pursue new ideas for a better world.
Follow Horn Entrepreneurship @udhorn and check out our entrepreneurship competition for high school students @diamondchalleng.
Dec 12, 2018 | Press
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About Horn Entrepreneurship
Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the University of Delaware’s creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement. Built and actively supported by successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders, Horn Entrepreneurship empowers aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs as they pursue new ideas for a better world.
Follow Horn Entrepreneurship @udhorn and check out our entrepreneurship competition for high school students @diamondchalleng.
Nov 1, 2018 | Press
So many amazing teens submit their ideas for social impact to the Diamond Challenge each year. We want to see them all succeed. From additional challenges to camps, here are some opportunities combining design thinking and compassion to help teens make a positive mark on the world.
Peace First
Peace First is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping young people around the world to become powerful peacemakers by: Investing in their ideas, providing them with tools and skills, connecting them with other awesome young people around the world, sharing their stories and impact with the world. Building upon the success of our two decades of working with young people in all 50 states and 82 countries, the Peace First Challenge is a call to action for young people around the world to identify an injustice they care about and solve it using the tools of compassion, courage, and collaborative leadership. In choosing to act, young people will unleash their entrepreneurial spirits to create, share, and produce powerful solutions to the biggest problems in their communities.
- Who can participate: The Challenge will be open to young people under the age of 25, anywhere in the world, with a particular focus on those between the ages of 13 and 18.
- Awards: By accepting the Peace First Challenge, participants will receive tools, resources, trained digital mentors, and access to mini-grants of up to $250.
Watson Institute
Watson Institute is a revolutionary new model of higher education for next-generation innovators and social entrepreneurs. They protect the courage of the next generation so they can pioneer their education, trailblaze lives as innovators, and contribute to solving the toughest challenges facing the world. Watson Scholars receive weekly mentorship and coaching sessions, free international legal support (through a partnership with Thomson Reuters), training in the hard skills and frameworks to take their ideas to the next level, and a community of peers that will last far beyond Watson. Watson Institute’s Basecamp program is a no-cost bootcamp for prospective Watson Scholars to experience elements of the Watson curriculum and put into practice the mindset of being a social entrepreneur.
- Who can participate: young, impact-driven social innovators – high school senior, community college, gap-year, or university students
- Application Process: Deadlines in fall and winter. Visit the Basecamp page to learn more.
Ashoka Youth Ventures
Youth Venture invests in young people’s journey to leave a positive mark on their school, college, home, and career. They create a collaborative environment that fosters empathy, respect, and wellbeing, and inspires children and adolescents to identify problems, invent their own solutions, and take action to implement them. They do so by engaging influencers in a young person’s community (called the “ecosystem”) — educators, parents, companies, universities, non-profit organizations, and government leaders — to realize their own capacity for changemaking and support youth on their journey. They tailor programs to fit the culture and needs of each partner in the ecosystem. Key offerings include:
- The Co-Creation Journey: a series of experiential workshops and gatherings designed to transform the culture of a school district, university, or organization. Engaging educators, parents, and professionals in a process of self-discovery, reflection, and problem-solving, enabling partners to realize their capacity for empathy and social impact.
- Storytelling: Storytelling is a platform that fosters empathy, social-emotional development, community building, and workforce skills development through the process of self-expression. They enable schools, youth-serving organizations, or companies to master communication skills by offering them a vehicle to narrate their passion and drive for change.
- Social Innovation Tools: the Dream It! Do It! Challenge is a series of facilitated engagements that guide young people to launch their own social ventures. Youth Venture shares this methodology with partner schools and organizations.
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About Horn Entrepreneurship
Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the University of Delaware’s creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement. Built and actively supported by successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders, Horn Entrepreneurship empowers aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs as they pursue new ideas for a better world.
Follow Horn Entrepreneurship @udhorn and check out our entrepreneurship competition for high school students @diamondchalleng.
