Goal 1: No poverty

End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Feel Good Period – Make menstrual products available to anyone who needs them

Period poverty is being increasingly recognised as an alarming barrier for young women to participate in education as more research comes to light. Feel Good Period began life as a start-up to make menstrual products available to anyone who needs them and raises awareness of issues in that area. Feel Good Period went on to become a finalist in the Velocity $100k Challenge, qualifying them for the LaunchPad programme. “We got a lot of development opportunities through that programme. As a first-year student, this was invaluable for me,” co-founder Sacha Baillie says.

Feel Good Period now exists as a student club on campus. Feel Good Period is committed to encouraging discussion about menstruation and improving access for all to period products. Everything raised at events goes towards purchasing period products to be put in bathrooms around campus or is donated.

Join the Feel Good Period Club

Pacific Med Tech – Answering Pacific healthcare professionals calls for help

Pacific Med Tech is a social venture that aims to support capacity building in biomedical engineering departments of hospitals in the Pacific. It was established in March 2020 after founders Janette Searle and Larissa Michelsen returned from a trip to the Pacific where they saw talented and dedicated medical professionals struggling to meet patient needs due to broken equipment.

Pacific Med Tech empowers hospital and health clinic staff to be able to fix broken equipment by supplying practical troubleshooting guides and other technical education opportunities. Pacific Med Tech started while Larissa was completing her Master of Engineering Studies, which meant they had the opportunity to enter into the Velocity $100k Challenge, delivered by the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Read more

Savy – Teaching basic financial literacy to young New Zealanders

Thousands of young New Zealanders have been taught basic financial literacy because of a charitable trust that began life at the Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Savy was initiated in 2008 by Velocity participants Shiva Gopalan, Lynn Lai, Akif Malik and Dipra Ray. The founders had seen how students (including themselves) had fallen into financial traps and were unprepared for financial life after secondary school. Class visits from banks left students disengaged because of how irrelevant the content was to their lifestyle.

The concept of students teaching students was conceptualised and Savy was developed through the University of Auckland’s Velocity student entrepreneurship programme. Since its beginnings, Savy has expanded to run throughout Auckland and Wellington. In the last 11 years, 60,000 secondary school students have participated in one of 2,400 workshops delivered within secondary schools, and over 250 university students have developed their leadership and teaching skills through facilitating workshops. Read more

Sugar Wallet – App making investing easy for everyday kiwis  

Sugar Wallet, an app co-founded by University of Auckland alumni, is on a mission to make investing simple for the everyday Kiwi – for those who don’t have time for extensive research, who may not have a passion or investing, or the means to seek professional financial advice. It is designed to help users get into healthy investing habits without having to pick stocks and funds, and allow them the financial freedom to achieve their life goals. Read more