Alumni Week – Friday’s Featured Societies!

Today we are highlighting three amazing societies between the UK and Ireland. All three are steeped in awards and have a great story to tell.

1. UCC Entrepreneurial and Social Society

The UCC Entrepreneurial & Social society was founded by Sam Fitzpatrick in 2008. What started off as a group of likeminded people getting together on a regular basis, has now grown into UCC’s largest student society. We run a range of events every year to cover both the social side of things, and entrepreneurship – so that includes talks from high calibre Entrepreneurs as well as some fresh, innovative and fun Social events.

E&S is committed to bringing the top entrepreneurs in Ireland to visit UCC and share their stories of success with the students. Some highlights in the society’s past year include Bill Cullen, Joe.ie’s Niall McGarry, Sean Gallagher, Lovin Dublin’s Niall Harbison and more.

Last year we launched the inaugural Irish Student’s Startup Weekend which saw teams comprised of students nationwide, commit to developing a business from scratch over 3 days! We held a successful innov8 week with prominent Irish leaders sharing their story, as well as travelling up to Dublin for the electrifying WebSummit event, getting the chance to speak with world renowned entrepreneurs.

But like everyone, E&S also has a fun (Social) side. In the past few years we have hosted some hugely successful events like the UCC Winter Break (which went to Amsterdam last year), The Iron Stomach Competition, themed club nights in Cork’s top nightclubs, and stand-up comedy acts such as Bernard O’Shea. E&S parties hard, and this year will be bigger and better than ever with a large number of secret events over the course of the year in store!

It’s great to see people that were involved with E&S in the past to go on and work on amazing projects. From LinkedIn, to founding their own startup, E&S provides a solid base to set up your future success. We recognise the power of Alumni relations, and it’s great to be able to reach out to people that have been in your spot before and take on their advice and just get to know them in general!

So check out our site at http://www.ucceands.com and add us on Facebook. Make sure you join in on the fun and party your way to being a billionaire.

And don’t forget – No Risk, No Reward

2. DCU Media Production Society

Dublin City University Media Production Society (DCU MPS) is one of DCU’s oldest societies. 30 years ago, the society was established to create and develop media in all its forms. This has come to include video, radio, graphic design, web design and many more over the years. With brief lulls in its existence over the past 30 years, today it is one DCU’s largest and most successful societies.

Over the past 5 years it has won 2 BICS awards, 2 Best Society in DCU awards, Best DCU Event, Best DCU Marketing and others.

As this is an important year in the society’s history, we are very keen to look back at the history of the society and at our alumni. So far we have made contact with several of the founders, some of whom are running things at a top level in RTE and other organisations. Trying to discover where we came from has become an important goal for the coming year and hopefully we can achieve this.

3. Enactus Manchester

Enactus Manchester is a growing volunteering society made up of university students who aim to improve the lives of those in need both here in the UK and internationally through entrepreneurship.  Our projects use practical business solutions to tackle real-life problems that hinder communities.

Not only do we invest in local projects, but we have also had tremendous success in our international efforts within Ghana through empowering women to build social enterprises to improve the quality of life in the area.

Enactus offers students the opportunity to develop leadership, teamwork and communication skills. For some, it offers the opportunity to apply their academic skills to real-life scenarios, for others it provides the unique opportunity to gain practical business skills that they would not otherwise obtain from their degree.

All of our student volunteers are ambitious and committed to their personal development and improving the livelihoods of hundreds in the process.

Speak Up!

peak Up runs English lessons with the aim of tackling one of Manchester’s main issues, social isolation of immigrants.

Manchester has more than double the national average of people who do not speak English as their first language. This inability to speak English and their lack of confidence to try has deeply affected their quality of life.

Recognizing this problem, we engaged in a collaborative effort with Gorton Mount, a local primary school to organize lessons for parents. All our volunteers undergo training by the university’s language centre and Teach First. We are currently in the process of expanding to a second school in Manchester.

Spot Finance

Over half of our young people are in debt and see a credit card or overdraft as a way of extending their spending power. We want to educate our young people to equip them with the financial knowledge and skills they need to make the right financial decisions and provide them options in the current economic climate.

Through our SPOT Finance project, we target 16-18 year olds in the local community to teach them how to manage their personal finances. Through workshops we teach students topics such as: Interest and Savings, Budgeting and How to set up a Business. This year we held a total of 8 workshops across 2 schools in the Greater Manchester area, reaching between 40 and 45 students.

Boost Consulting

£730 million in funding has been cut in the voluntary sector since 2011 and an additional £1 billion is to be cut by 2018. With limited resources social organizations faced great difficulties in running their activities.

Boost is a social consultancy group specialising in business and marketing strategies as well as IT solutions. Currently we have 45 student consultants working with 8 different organizations.

The consultancy process begins by matching students and university alumni to organisations relative to their strengths and experiences. We work closely with our clients to ensure that they understood the solutions and that knowledge is being transferred sustainably.  Feedback and evaluation is continuous throughout and we have had a great deal of success. Particularly with ‘Healthy Me Healthy Communities’ an organisation running health related activities for schools, councils and local communities, which made a turnover of £75,000 with help from our students.

Hope Givers

There is a large inequality in Ghana between the North and the South, the North has poverty levels in the region of 70% and the overall average for the country is 29%.

We met Linda in the small Northern town of Biniba. She was an aspiring social entrepreneur but lacked the skills to build her Shea butter making business. Through training sessions our students have taught Linda key business skills and concepts to help her move forward. We have also provided her with a micro-finance loan of £2000, fundraised by our society, to provide the women with the machinery and materials needed to make the Shea butter.

The next stage of the project is moving into marketing and selling the product for a profit with the hopes of providing the women with a sustainable income and improving the quality of life of them and their families.

Upcoming Projects

We are at the early stages of collaborating with a team of Manchester alumni currently working in Malawi building schools, using cheaper building technology.

We are also setting up our own commercial project to ensure a sustainable income for the society.

The Enactus year ends with the overall competition beginning Nationally and ending at Enactus World Cup. Teams present the progress of their projects to a panel of judges who determine which teams had the most impact improving the quality of life and standard of living of their beneficiaries. This competitive process creates a ‘best-practice’ sharing environment and is aimed at fostering a healthy spirit of competition. When we compete to change lives, we all win.