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Acara Challenge Overview
The Acara Challenge is a unique way for a university to get their students involved in entrepreneurship and sustainable design for social change.
Purpose? 
The purpose of the Acara Challenge is to:
- Engage students in a multi-discipline, multi-country collaboration to develop sustainable solutions and business models to challenging global social issues.
- Incubate and implement the winning plans into successful sustainable social businesses.
What is the Acara Challenge?
The Acara Challenge is a competition. The intent of the competition is to develop business plans for a sustainable business that addresses the subject of the challenge. During the Acara Challenge '09, the topic was providing clean
water to the slums of Mumbai. For the Challenge '10, there will be two
topics: one focused on water and one focused on energy.
There are three stages to the Acara Challenge - Course, Challenge and Summer Institute for Winning Teams.
1. Course
Each university offers a 'for-credits' course. This course provides the know-how to get involved in entrepreneurship and sustainable design for global social change. All students interested in participating in the challenge, must enroll for this course.
2. Challenge 
Each participating US university will have a partner university from a developing country. The competing teams are composed of students from a US university and its respective partner university.
Students may
propose a for-profit or not-for-profit organization. All teams will be judged by a "venture capital-like" panel. The judging criteria are as follows:
- Problem and Solution Description – What is the solution? How does it address the problem?
- Market description – How the teams identify the market segments? How they assess the parameters of the segment like needs, size, purchasing capacity, etc?
- Sustainable business model – What is the business model? How does it solve the market’s requirement? Is it sustainable?
 3. Summer Institute for Winning Teams The winning teams will be awarded a two-month paid internship to the University of Minnesota Acara Institute. The Institute provides funding for the team to visit the site location (Mexico or India) for roughly two weeks. During the Institute, Acara will work with the teams to help them further develop their business plan and secure funding for their venture.
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