11 October, 2018

The Enactus World Cup took place in San Jose, USA from October 9 to 11.

Enactus is an international, non-profit organisation. It provides a platform for teams of outstanding students from Higher Education to create community development projects while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders of the future.

Team EnactusIreland included three representatives from CIT; Fay Clohessy - Environmental Science (2nd Yr), Clement Sim Shi Jie - Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (2nd Yr) and Faculty Advisor, Lisa Murphy, Lecturer, Department of Management and Enterprise. Their projects support the homeless community, those in direct provision and young job seekers from disadvantaged areas.

Clement Sim Shi Jie, Lisa Murphy and Fay Clohessy

The standard of the competing teams was incredibly high. Team EnactusIreland were successful in reaching the final 12 teams out of 36 teams from across the globe. The final four shortlisted teams included India, Egypt, Morocco and Canada, with Canada voted the overall winner of the competition.  Canada’s Zambian based project, focusing on improving farmers lives through sustainable agriculture, was breath taking in its ambition. Videos of each country’s presentation, from the opening round through to semi-final and final, are available to view at http://enactus.org/worldcup/watch/

For the first time ever, the World Cup hosted a plenary session for faculty advisors who presented their research on a disparate array of topics in the area of social and community enterprise. A poster session was also held on the same day which gave the students the opportunity to familiarise themselves with some of the research that is being undertaken in this space by faculty advisors. Lisa presented the joint research that was undertaken by herself and Dr. Helen McGuirk, Head, Hincks Centre on “Social Entrepreneurship: Social Entrepreneurs, are they different?” at the poster session. Both Helen and Lisa are faculty advisors to Team EnactusCIT. This opportunity for academics to discuss and potentially collaborate on research from different countries and different types of higher education institutes was a very welcome one and rewarding for all involved.

Lisa Murphy

Gerard O’Donovan, Head, Faculty of Business and Humanities and Dr. Breda Kenny, Head, School of Business have generously supported the EnactusCIT Team.

Visit the Enactus website at http://www.enactus.org