Young San Diego entrepreneurs can now compete in the University of San Diego’s Social Innovation Challenge, which recently opened the “San Diego Track”to include a wider range of local students.

Students can create ideas to solve social, economic, environmental, and other problems that occur locally or around the world to compete for a $17,500 prize.

USD recently opened the SIC to include students from San Diego State; University of California, San Diego; San Diego City College and Point Loma Nazarene University.

The SIC is organized by USD’s Center for Peace and Commerce and was expanded to include other San Diego schools by a contribution from the Moxie Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Irwin Zahn to encourage entrepreneurial success.

“By opening up the USD Social Innovation Challenge to more students across San Diego, we can advance the Moxie Foundation’s vision of engaging the brightest, most creative people in our region to address the most pressing needs of our community and planet,” Moxie Foundation President Peter Zahn said in a press release.

Center for Peace and Commerce Associate Director Nadia Auch said students who want to apply can register and create a profile online. They must answer five questions about their project and can apply individually or in a team.

“Our Social Innovation Challenge is a place where students can turn their passion into a reality, it is a place to go for seeding entrepreneurship that also produces a benefit to society,” Auch said.

Auch said expanding the competition allows for more creativity.

“In order to continue to enrich the quality of proposals and spur social innovation locally and globally, we realized the need to open up the opportunity to more students in the region,” Auch said. “Inviting more students will build a healthy competition to fuel stronger ideas.”

The competition began in 2011, but this is the first year that USD has opened up the SIC to students from other San Diego schools.

SDSU features the Zahn Innovation Center, which is an on-campus incubator for entrepreneurs to launch their business ideas at no cost.

“SDSU is committed to fostering social innovation in the community and collaborating with other universities to create opportunities for our social entrepreneurs,”  Associate Director for Social Innovation at the SDSU Zahn Innovation Center Bhairvee Shavdia said.

Competition entries are due March 3.