Keller students sweep Princeton social impact competition

PSICOMP (Princeton Social Impact Competition) is Princeton University’s annual social venture competition hosted by Princeton Social Innovation. Their goal is to provide bright, motivated entrepreneurs with the resources and connections they need to create social change. The competition took place at the Friend Center Auditorium last Friday, April 27.

Each of the three winning teams are part of the Keller Center family.  First and second place winners received funding for their ventures from KC and the third place winner will be part of the eLab 2018 Summer Accelerator program. The winners were:

First Place: CollegeSnaps is a nonprofit corporation designed to bridge the gap between first-generation, low-income high school students and selective institutions for higher education. Their service, which utilizes the SnapChat platform, will help familiarize high school students with the ideas and experiences of what college is about.
 
Second Place: WellPower provides solar-powered water purifiers to communities without access to clean water. The unit fills a critical global need for potable water. It’s also built in a sustainable way, using upcycled solar panels and repurposed automobile lithium ion batteries — both of which would otherwise end up in landfills — to power a water pump and filtration system.
 
Third Place: BlockX, who will participate in the eLab Summer Accelerator Program this summer, builds decentralized applications to help people reclaim their privacy and data on the internet. BlockX has two products: a decentralized encrypted messaging and payments platform (similar to WeChat) and a decentralized microblogging platform (similar to Twitter). Their products use a blockchain-based naming and storage system, Blockstack, and help people overcome censorship, surveillance and data lock-in.

Congratulations to all the teams on a job well done!