Students Don’t Have to Drop Out to Thrive as Social Entrepreneurs

A recent article in Forbes magazine titled “Students Don’t Have to Drop out to Thrive as Social Entrepreneurs” described the work done by Enactus.

Unlike some similar organizations, Enactus students are able to create social change while getting a degree. Enactus is a network of student, academic and business leaders from 36 countries all over the world.

Students fund their own projects by using their entrepreneurial skills to fundraise and even run businesses whose profits support their work.

Enactus, which was previously called SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) was founded in 1975 by Robert T. Davis. Current President and CEO Alvin Rohrs took over at age 25 when there were only 18 participating schools. Under his leadership, Enactus has grown to over 1,600 participating schools and has about 400 corporate sponsors.

In the Forbes article by Kerry Flynn, Rohrs said, “As we grew as an organization we came to understand that promoting business wasn’t as important as teaching business, and teaching business wasn’t as important as applying business skills to improve lives.”

Prominent business leaders in the Enactus network serve as judges for competitions that offer students a chance to share their projects and gain presentation experience and sharpen their networking skills. Some of the companies that are engaged in the program are Walmart, The Coca-Cola Company and Hershey.

Regional, national and international competitions give students the opportunity to present the projects they work so hard on. Through these projects, students gain experience with creating business plans, working in a group and sometimes even managing fellow team members.

In order to support future growth of the organization, Enactus launched the #seeopportunity campaign this summer, featuring various project stories and videos of prominent executives telling some of these stories. The campaign serves as a way to get more people involved in this organization that includes not only students, but also business leaders and the community. Learn more about this campaign at www.enactus.org/seeopportunity/.

Read the original article from Forbes at www.forbes.com/sites/kerryflynn/2014/08/13/students-dont-have-to-drop-out-to-thrive-as-social-entrepreneurs/.