Meet the BU Refugee Challenge Finalists at the Grand Finale!
Please join us this Wednesday, April 12, at 4:00 for the grand finale of the BU Refugee Challenge! We’ll hear the four finalists’ 10-minute pitches as well as live feedback from our fabulous panel of judges. To get your ticket, click here.
Finalists
Asylum Program @ BHCHP
Our goal is to grow our small and nascent pro-bono Asylum Clinic at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, staffed by volunteer clinicians.
DREAM Venture Labs
DREAM Venture Labs is a place for ambitious refugees and migrants to develop their business ideas with the help of student volunteers from various Boston-based universities, offering mentoring and skill-based support in areas such as design, business development, marketing, sales, legal, and more.
Community Connection Through Cooking
Community Connection through Cooking is a program that aims to address the social isolation and nutritional needs of newly arrived Haitian migrants who are pregnant or postpartum, an issue described in more detail in the following section. It will do so by engaging such migrants in group nutrition classes taught by a culinary educator in Boston Medical Center’s (BMC) Teaching Kitchen.
EnterCambio
We hope to create an easy-to-use social networking platform and app to match college students as well as refugees, asylum seekers, and other immigrants in Greater Boston. Our mission is to facilitate valuable discussions and provide a pathway for language/cultural exchange to foster long-lasting relationships between college students and migrants.
Judges
Dr. Beverly Brown is the Director of Development, Industry at the Boston University School of Public Health and actively serves on various advisory boards – including Innovate@BU’s advisory board – and committees to support women in science and university development efforts.
Representative Dylan Fernandes serves Falmouth, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket in the legislature, focusing on combating climate change, advancing affordable housing, and addressing the opioid and heroin epidemic while holding key committee positions. He was thrust into the national spotlight after successfully mobilizing his community to support the 50 migrants sent to his district by Ron DeSantis in 2022.
Gladys Vega has dedicated more than three decades of service to the City of Chelsea and La Colaborativa, which she joined in 1990 – just two years after its founding. During her tenure at La Colaborativa, Gladys moved from receptionist to community organizer to Assistant Executive Director and ultimately Executive Director in 2006. She was appointed Vice Chair of the Governor’s Council on Latino Empowerment in April 2023.
Amy Slaughter, Senior Advisor at RefugePoint, is a refugee assistance professional with over 25 years of experience, having directed resettlement programs, helped build RefugePoint, and launched an initiative focused on refugee self-reliance.
