Mauro Cozzi Gasparotti Foundation Year Engineering

 

Mauro took part in the Social Innovation Challenge and was chosen to represent the University of Southampton at the UKISEEN social entrepreneurship conference in Chennai, India:

"I first learned about the Social Impact Lab thanks to their “Social Innovation Challenge”. I was excited about the prospect of a platform for presenting my ideas and meeting other people with similar interests. The event was really fun and and thought provoking. It was a great chance to practice my presentation skills, and my first attempt ever at pitching something to a panel. I learned a lot of business skills, such as the basics of crafting a business model and, more importantly, I discovered that I was interested in social entrepreneurship. All in all, the Social Innovation Challenge taught me a lot about myself, the world, and showed me a new possible career path.

 

Thanks to the Social Impact Lab’s commitment to offering great extra-curricular activities I have been able to learn and experience Social Entrepreneurship

 

Having finished the challenge with a strong idea for a cigarette-butt recycling project, my team decided to pursue it outside of the competition. I was thus able to begin conversations with Josie Francis and Pathik Pathak, who have continuously given us great advice and pointed us in the right direction regarding the project. During Easter, I was incredibly lucky to have been invited by Josie and Pathik to join them in the UKISEEN conference in India. There, I gained a completely new perspective as to how engineers can take on the model of social entrepreneurship".