PopUp Wins the Social Enterprise Challenge 2016
On the weekend of 13th/14th of February, Enactus Southampton students teamed up with the Social Impact Lab to run the inaugural Social Enterprise Challenge. The aim of the event was to expose more students to the social enterprise sector, educate them on how social enterprises work, provision them with transferable skills and also gain Enactus Southampton a new fledgling local project.
The challenge was contested by five teams of up to six students who were given workshops on the fundamental building blocks of social enterprise. These workshops covered the social business model canvas, problem mapping, presentation skills and service design. After the workshops were delivered on the Saturday students were tasked with coming up with innovative, feasible, scalable and sustainable social enterprise projects that had the potential to become a part of Enactus Southampton. These projects were then presented to a panel of expert judges who deemed that Pop Up had the biggest scope for social impact.
Pop Up is the brain child of second year languages student Oreolu Grillo and third year engineer Rahul Nair and aims to bring Southampton’s communities together by hosting pop up cultural events in the cities disused buildings. The project has already had its first meeting within Enactus Southampton's successful incubator, Project Innovation where the students will gain experience in building and running their project. This experience, which is valuable for employability, is what set the social enterprise challenge apart from other events and was something which Josie Francis, Programme Manager of The Social Impact Lab was keen to incorporate. Josie also stated that her programme is always looking to provide students with the chance to learn valuable skills for employability, and that the Social Enterprise Challenge provided the perfect opportunity for them to do so.
The high standard of projects and presentation delivery has led to the event being deemed a success, with there already being plans made for another event next semester. The successful collaboration between staff and student groups for this event has led to creating a positive impact both on the students who took part and hopefully in the long term will benefit the local community with the progression of Pop Up.