Enactus: the social entrepreneurship success story
Published on 05/22/2019
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Created in 2008, the branch of Enactus in Rouen which this year is celebrating its 11th year of existence, can be proud to have become one of the most dynamic teams in France. At the end of the month, alongside their fellow team from Reims, the association will take part in the Enactus Festival, a competition with the best teams nationwide. At stake: a prize of 15,000 euros and a ticket to take part in the Enactus World Cup, the great international final.
Enactus in France is 1,661 students engaged in 62 partner universities and “grandes écoles”. Above all it is 272 projects helping 7,418 beneficiaries. The vision of Enactus France is to engage the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders to create a better, more sustainable world. The goal shared by the students is to set up social entrepreneurial projects helped by the commitment of professionals in companies and members of the faculty.
At NEOMA BS Rouen, year after year, Catherine DERRIEN-CHURCHILL, lecturer in English, accompanies the students as their faculty advisor in their most ambitious projects! No limit, the wellbeing of the community comes first! “We are lucky at school to have one of the most committed and involved teams in France with 39 students leading 7 amazing projects! To belong to Enactus is a wonderful opportunity for our students. It’s interesting for them to be able to follow social projects from A to Z. They can see in concrete terms the results of their actions. It is a unique experience that is really rewarding especially as they are supported by partner companies all of which see this association as a great pool of future talent to boost their workforce.”
The Rouen association will present two projects
This year, Enactus Neoma Rouen, voted the best associative project in France by EY in April 2019, will present two projects at the national Enactus France final on 27th and 28th May. “Each year, we can either follow an existing project, launched by previous generations of Enactus students in Rouen, or create our own projects,” explains Chloé LE GONIDEC, the president of Enactus NEOMA Rouen. “We will present Beyomb, launched in 2016 which seeks to fight child malnutrition in Salémata, in the south-east of Senegal, by developing an ecosystem to grow soya in this region and Paye ton Compost, launched this year, which encourages students to put their compost in a bin each week in exchange for vouchers giving them a reduction with local producers.”
The team in Reims has also been selected to present their project Interconnect, which fights against solitude among the elderly by giving them computing classes led by students. In the final, they will all do their very best to appeal to the judges with a detailed pitch in order to show the concrete impact of their projects. “In our pitch we must start with a need, then explain our actions, so as to illustrate our real impacts. On this subject, we are very proud of our results. In Senegal for example, in two years we have helped the cooperative of young farmers to grow soya where it did not grow before and even to increase their first crop of 87 kg in 2017 to 850 kg in 2018 and we expect them to harvest 3,000 kg this year. It is the same for Paye Ton Compost, in just two months on the campus we have impacted 177 students, collected 226 kg of bio-waste and enabled a local producer to increase his turnover! All these results have been achieved thanks to the involvement of Enactus students in Rouen with different yet complimentary profiles (international, PGE, GBBA…)”
For the students in the association, they just have to convince the judges that their project is the best to be able to fly off to the World Cup final which will take place in September 2019 in the Silicon Valley in the USA! “That really would be something great! Enactus NEOMA Rouen and Reims have both done this before and this year we believe that we may be lucky enough to do it again! Follow us on our Facebook page!”