This summer, LifeSaveHer won MIT's Priscilla King Gray (PKG) IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge (IDEAS), securing $20,000 in funding for the project.
For over 20 years, IDEAS has remained committed to sponsoring student-led projects for social good. The committee recognized LifeSaveHer's mission to decrease demographic disparities in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest outcomes for individuals with breasts through its development of a breast adaptor for CPR trainings manikins.
This year's 18 IDEAS finalists participated in an eight-week seminar series, during which team members gained insights into effective methods for implementing relevant and practical social change. Abbie Schipper of LifeSaveHer explained that "the seminar series was an invaluable resource for us in conceptualizing how our project was going to impact all the different people who could interact, directly or indirectly, with our product."
This year, LifeSaveHer, along with four other projects for social good received juried grants from the IDEAS committee. The other projects included sustainability initiatives to combat invasive seaweed (Sustainable Ocean Solutions) and plastic waste (Ishara); a medical device commercialization platform implemented in Latin America (Medikana); and a project supporting female-identifying and BIPOC entrepreneurs (New Majority Capital Foundation).
Read more about the 2023 IDEAS challenge here.