Four Pakistani-American students have made Pakistan proud by winning the prestigious Hult Prize challenge and a $1 million award in seed capital.
Rutgers University graduates Hanaa Lakhani, Moneed Mian, Hasan Usmani, as well as CEO Gia Farooqi, are one step closer to turning their idea for tackling the global refugee crisis into reality with Roshni Rides – a transportation network to empower refugees overseas, the Huffington Post reported.
The Hult Prize Foundation, a nonprofit organization for social enterprise, last year presented students with its eighth annual goal-oriented contest to develop a startup venture to restore the rights and dignity of one million refugees by 2022.
After several stages of competition, six finalists including Team Roshni Rides were selected from more than 50,000 applicants from over 100 countries.
The business model is a formalized rickshaw shuttle service that aims to offer fixed, affordable commuting prices to urbanized refugees in South Asia, where transportation options are often limited.
Easily accessible local travel will help refugees in having easier access to education and employment opportunities, the team members said.
Former President Bill Clinton, a key Hult Prize partner, declared Roshni Rides the winner of this year’s challenge. “This is a private solution to a public problem that will have a big impact,” he said.
All four team members plan to relocate to southern Pakistan, so they can use their award money to bring their business idea to life. They intend to return to Orangi Town, where they conducted field research over the summer.
Farooqi, 22, said the refugee-focused challenge posed a politically poignant issue for her team. There was a lot of news coverage surrounding the Syrian refugee crisis when it was announced last October, she added.
Participating in the Hult Prize challenge to support refugees in Muslim-majority Pakistan and beyond gave her a platform to represent the US on a global stage as an American Muslim, Farooqi said.
“America is diverse and looks different,” she added. “Anybody can help anybody, no matter what you look like.”
Farooqi said it felt “very unsafe and almost uncomfortable” to be a Muslim in America after President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, which focused heavily on a ban to halt the entry of refugees and other citizens from predominantly Muslim nations into the United States.
“Being Muslim, and feeling very connected to our global Muslim family, it just became something that was so much more than a competition,” she said.