Enactus Mannheim
Enactus – entrepreneurial, action, us: A community of student, academic and business leaders committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to shape a better, more sustainable world. Our goal is not to hand out help, but to work side-by-side with our community to create sustainable change. With over 72,000 members worldwide, Enactus is one of the largest international student organizations. At 1730 universities around the world, students develop communities outreach projects and put the theoretical concepts that they learned during their university studies into action.
Enactus at the University of Mannheim was founded in 2005 and has since grown to 120 members. In 12 projects, students develop innovative solutions for society’s problems, such as affordable and fashionable clothes for disabled people, or the reintegration of prisoners into society. A project example is Effishent. With this project, we work on tackling the problem of malnutrition around the world, by using aquaponics farming systems. These combine a fish breeding and a hydroponic gardening part, working independent of soil and climatic conditions. This solution is able to provide essential vitamins and proteins for local communities. By adapting the system to local conditions, we already managed to implement the project in Indonesia, Togo and Uganda, providing over 180 people with sufficient nutrition.
During the year, we meet up regularly outside of our project teams for fun activities such as running dinners or the one-Enactus weekend, where Enactus teams from all over Germany get together. A highlight of the year is the national competition where all German teams present their past year’s results. In the past years, we have won the national competition several times, allowing us to present our results at the world cup.
A great Semester has come to an end and we can look back to six months, in which we managed to improve people’s lives successfully with our projects.
We started the spring semester with our team weekend, which set the tone for a semester of intense and passionate work, allowing us to further improve our work in every one of our 12 projects.
Here are some examples:
As a part of the “Mannheimer Radjubiläum” our project Fluchthelfer had the opportunity to successfully start the sales of their beautiful Upcycling products, created by a former prisoner.
We implemented our project Effishent in Togo and in Uganda, giving 175 people access to nutritious food , fighting their malnutrition.
Effishent was also invited to present their project in front of 100 investors at the “European Student Startups” competition in London, Europe´s first seed investment platform solely for students, and returned with an incredible 3rdplace.
Only a few weeks later we reached 2nd place with our project ReSoil, in the pitch battle at the first ever Q-summit. On site, in Uganda, ReSoil taught 86 smallholder farmers a technique, how to make their land fertile again.
Finally, we proudly presented two of our projects at the Enactus national competition in June, coming in at an incredible 2nd Place and winning the prize for best entrepreneurial idea.
But most importantly for us, we created 9 jobs and empowered 138 people to improve their livelihoods sustainably with innovative ideas and entrepreneurial action.
We cannot wait for the next semester and many more success stories.
Enjoy your summer!
Enactus is hosting its first Startup Accelerator!
At the accelerator several of the social entrepreneurship projects from enactus are going to be presented. Check them out and learn more about what enactus does. For more information on the accelerator got to their website!
When: 28.04.2017
Where: Feierabendhaus BAS, Leuschnerstrasse 47, 67063 Ludwigshafen
The Enactus World Cup is over! From October 22 to 24, 5000 Enactus members from all over the world met at Bejing to pitch their projects in front of a grand jury.
The nation of Germany was represented by the Enactus Mannheim team, which had won the National Cup in September. They won the preliminary round against Tadzhikistan and the Ukraine, but bowed out in the semifinal round against Puerto Rico. The world cup was won by China with a solar project, second place was secured by the Morroccan team with an innovative solution for the purification of water.
However, the three projects which were pitched by the Mannheim team are quite amazing anyway!
Intercreative is taking care of asylum seekers who have no work permit in Germany. Together with them, the team created a cookbook with foreign recipes ("Intercreative-Die Welt kocht im Quadrat" can now be bought at the university of Mannheim). This brought public attention to the conditions of asylum seekers and allowed the funding of some language and application courses for them.
Sunté is a project set in the rural regions of Togo. Local hospitals are being equipped with solar cells to give them a better power supply. Furthermore, visitor will be able to charge their cellphones in charging stations. This feature is meant to convince more people to enter a hospital, because many Togolese people distrust and avoid western medicine.
Finally, Autipreneur is a project that will help autistic people to realize their business ideas and market their products. To do that, they found companies which are solely led by autists! The project was created in cooperation with Auticare e.V. and has already brought forth a first product: "Sonarglove" is a glove that works like an acoustic parking distance control system and allows blind people to find their way more easily inside of buildings.
All around the world, members of Enactus are using their skills and knowledge to conduct social and ecological projects. Their goal is to create sustainable advantages for socially disadvantaged people via entrepreneurial activities.
At the international project competition of the organization, teams from all regions of the world are presenting their work and competing against each other. This year, the event will take place from October 22 to October 24 at Beijing. As winners of the national cup, the Enactus Mannheim team will be representing Germany at this exciting contest!
Enactus Mannheim is one of 41 Enactus teams at German Universities. Right now, they are conducting 9 different projects. At the project "Fluchthelfer", inmates of a prison at Bruchsal are recycling broken bycicles to make them sellable again. This work gives the inmates a challenging acitvity during their imprisonment and thereby increases their chance of social rehabilitation. Another project example is "Autipreneur", an experiment to found a company with autistic people. It is meant to fight the high umemployment rate among autists, who often struggle to find jobs though they are notably gifted. The reason is that they have special requirements at their workplace, which will be met at the "Autipreneur" company.
You would like to join Enactus? Take a look at http://unimannheim.enactus.de/.
Creating a better world via Entrepreneurship - the students of Enactus want to use the knowledge from their courses to help socially disadvantaged citizens. In cooperation with social partners like the Caritas, they develop project ideas that will help people in a sustainable manner. Right now, they have 60 active members in 7 projects that strive to improve the quality of life for groups like prison inmates, autists or asylum seekers.
At the beginning of each new semester, they are recruiting new members! Take this chance to become active and meet them at their kickoff!
When? September 3th, 7pm
Where? East Wing of Schloss Mannheim, room SN 163.
To learn more about their events, projects and partners, please visit http://unimannheim.enactus.de/!
