The Winners 2009
Tomorrow’s social entrepreneurs: The winners of the impACT³ student competition have been selected
The decision in the final round of the international student competition impACT³ by Jacobs University and Vodafone Foundation Germany is made: The smartest and at the same time most successful social entrepreneurs-to-be are four students from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and Zeppelin University. They won the jury’s favor with their project “Spread the Word” that markets prison made products as a social rehabilitation measure for juvenile delinquents. Runner-up was the project of the Danish Aarhus School of Business: “Fair Innovation” mobilized fitness studio users to support energy supply for underdeveloped regions in Bangladesh. “Algae-Energy” by Jacobs University students was ranked third: They designed and ran a feasibility study to evaluate the usability of algae for fuel production, CO2 degradation and simultaneous sewage purification.
About 200 guests watched the three winning teams being selected live among five finalists, who had been invited by the impACT³ jury to present their projects during yesterday’s finale. Circa 100 students from nine European universities had been participating in the preceding contest, founding and running community-oriented entrepreneurial projects over a period of seven weeks with a seed asset of 16 Euros at max. The top 10 projects out of 24 entries were nominated for jury evaluation on the basis of approximately 5000 online votes submitted by the general public. Both, the ideas’ originality and the projects’ actual success during the contest’s duration, served as evaluation criteria.
The winning team, the socially oriented PR agency „Spread the Word“, developed a marketing strategy for products made by imprisoned juvenile delinquents that convinced Baden Wurttemberg’s Ministry of Justice to entrust the young entrepreneurs with the market launch of “Jailers” bags made in a juvenile penitentiary in Heilbronn. On the one hand, the four students understand their entrepreneurial idea as a measure to increase the young delinquents’ chances of resocialization by strengthening their self-confidence. On the other hand, they want to create awareness for the social background of juvenile delinquency.
The second ranked team, „Fair Innovation“, managed to turn their seed asset of 16 Euros into a profit of 1,500 Euros by means of an inventive fundraising campaign: They kept track of the energy production of volunteers doing their work-out at the gym. Then, they recruited sponsors who converted these “donated” energy units into money and contribute this to the Grameen Bank’s Shakti Program, which finances the energy supply in poor rural areas of Bangladesh via micro credits.
„Alga-Energie“, the team that came in third, was able to show, as a result of their feasibility study conducted in Jacob University’s Ocean Lab with algae bioreactor systems of their own design, that in locations with high solar radiation, such as Africa, Asia or South America, up to 400,000 tons of CO2 per year can be mitigated on a surface of only 10m². Moreover, the team concluded that 116,000 tons of bio fuel can be produced by the harvested algae – a fact that is especially interesting for developing countries.
A special highlight in the course of the award ceremony was a video message from Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and the patron of the impACT³ competition, who called for action: "There is no social problem in today’s world that cannot be solved: The problems are caused by people, so people are able to solve them. All we need are good ideas and the will to act upon them. Ideas arise from reflecting about problems in our immediate surroundings. And every single idea can be transformed into a business – everybody can change the world."
Prof. Joachim Treusch, President of Jacobs University, congratulated the winners and expressed his appreciation for the commitment of all impACT³ participants: "In the course of only seven weeks the students learnt what entrepreneurship means in real terms and what huge tasks are waiting for social entrepreneurs. Thus, we were able to achieve the main goal of impACT³, which is demonstrating to young people that financial needs can go very well hand in hand with ecological and with social objectives. Of course, I am also happy and proud about the fact that six Jacobs students made it into the finale with creative initiatives and that one team actually reached a position amongst the three winners."
Dr. Mark Speich, director of Vodafone Foundation Germany, adds: "impACT³ impressively proofed the entrepreneurial spirit of students of all disciplines from all over Europe and their capability to develop intelligent and sustainable solutions for society – including people outside of their living environment. This encourages Vodafone Foundation Germany to expand its commitment in the field of social entrepreneurship and to further actively support it."
The impACT³ contest motto "Break the cliché – discover Social Entrepreneurship" set the agenda for the entire final ceremony. Freely quoted from Otto v. Bismarck, Prof. Dr. Günter Faltin, laureate of the German Gründerpreis 2009, stated: "Economic activity is too important to leave it to economists". Without fear of provocation he brought forward unorthodox hypotheses about entrepreneurship and shed light on the debatable thin line between entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship: "Our society needs more entrepreneurial initiatives that do not merely tease out new needs in consumers, but rather answer to existing problems with economic and also social fantasy."
The subsequent panel discussion with the competition’s jury of experts in the field of social entrepreneurship and non profit organizations referred to Faltin’s hypotheses and pointed out future possibilities and developments for social entrepreneurship in Europe. Steven Ney, Professor of Policy Sciences at Jacobs University, summed up: "Social Entrepreneurship is facing great challenges. impACT³, however, showed that there is enormous potential to meet these challenges. It is essential for all kinds of actors – from politics, economics, the Third Sector and from science – to find new ways to mobilize this potential and to shape the future together."