The USAID Building University-Industry Learning and Development through Innovation and Technology (BUILD-IT) Alliance is modernizing technology and engineering higher education in Vietnamese universities and leveraging diverse government, industry, and academic partners to produce graduates with the skills that Vietnam’s increasingly sophisticated economy demands. The USAID BUILD-IT Alliance, Arizona State University, and Dow Vietnam STEM Program launched the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program in Vietnam in 2018. The EPICS program is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary social entrepreneurship challenge for STEM student teams to collaboratively brainstorm, design, prototype, and test their engineering-based solutions to local challenges. The Maker to Entrepreneur Program, an extension of the EPICS program, guides student teams to develop a business model and an evidence-based pitch for their EPICS projects.
On June 22, Ambassador Daniel J. Kritenbrink attended the USAID BUILD-IT Alliance and Dow Vietnam STEM Program’s second annual Maker to Entrepreneur: Venture Demo Day, where young engineering students participated in an investor-style pitch competition and competed for a total of $1,000 in start-up funding. Teams from Da Nang University of Technology, Can Tho University, and Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology won the top three prizes for creating a smart life jacket, pesticide spraying wagon, and smart recycling bin respectively.
So What? The USAID BUILD-IT public-private ecosystem is designed to produce graduates who can solve problems and engineer solutions to add value to Vietnam’s social and economic development.
