11 November, 2021

Enactus MTU is looking to increase their impacts through the involvement of more students from all campuses. Enactus MTU are actively making steps to encourage this and last week, Joshua Manaid, a 4th year business student in MTU and the current Chairperson and Team Leader for Enactus MTU, presented through Zoom to students in MTU Kerry campus.

Drawing on the successes and awards Enactus MTU have received recently, Joshua and the team, including Anderson De Paula, a final year accounting student and Treasurer of Enactus MTU and Thomas Ariyibi, IT student and Senior Advisor for Enactus MTU, joined students from MTU Kerry campus online to discuss their experience of being part of Enactus, the interesting projects and the many, many benefits that they as students and new members can also enjoy.

The Team spoke to students about social enterprise projects they can get involved with that can greatly improve the lives and skills of many in need. The presentation also highlighted other benefits to Enactus MTU members such as greatly improving the students' own employability opportunities through skills development and the possibility to develop connections with corporates in the process through the Enactus network.

Enactus MTU have a few projects running concurrently and highlighted two of these during the presentation. The first project the team spoke about was project ACE (Autism Cooking Education). This is a series of cooking and baking workshops given by Enactus MTU students both online and in-person and has partnered with an Autism charity - the Rainbow Club. With the use of the Rainbows Clubs kitchen, the workshops aim to guide individuals on the Autism spectrum towards becoming more independent, providing essential life skills such as being able to cook for themselves.

The other project highlighted was project FLY (Financial Literacy for You). This project was developed as a result of an identified gap in knowledge relating to the lack of practical financial advice taught at second level. It was found that the majority of students felt that their schools did not teach them how to manage their money nor teach them about taxes, loans, savings, mortgages, investments, etc. Through research conducted by Enactus MTU students, it was found there was an appetite among second level students to learn about this outside of their curriculum. An app was developed through which students learn financial literacy through gamification. Students apply their learnings developed in class through engaging with the app. This results in their knowledge being assessed through the app in a fun, engaging and effective way for both teacher and learner. Project FLY has already been successfully piloted in a DEIS school in Cork, which has decided to embed it into its curriculum this year. Another school has signed up to deliver FLY this year and the project is looking to expand into more schools.

Faculty advisors from the MTU Kerry and Cork campuses, including Breda Dwyer, Ashley Gaskin and Rebecca Robinson also joined the presentation. The faculty advisors assist in the activities of the Enactus MTU team through encouragement, advice and guidance.

For additional information and contact details for Enactus MTU, please visit the Education & Groups section of our website. Alternatively, please email Rebecca.Robinson@mtu.ie.