Published on: Monday, 16 November 2015

Enactus Ireland
 

“If I could use only one word to describe the Enactus World Cup experience it would be... Phenomenal!” That’s what Rebecca Robinson, Enactus Team Leader on the CIT campus said about her recent trip to the Enactus World Cup in Johannesburg. Rebecca is a research intern at the CIT Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence and the Team Leader for Enactus CIT. She has shared her Enactus World Cup experience with us and is encouraging students to get involved in this great opportunity and travel to The Enactus World Cup in Toronto 2016. As well as being a remarkable experience, with great life lessons learned and memories forged, Rebecca was very proud to be representing CIT for its first year as a member of Enactus and she enjoyed every second of it.

Day 1: After arriving in Johannesburg at 10.30am, after a gruelling 17 hours of sleep deprived travelling, the tiredness had little effect on Rebecca as she was kept going by the motivating atmosphere and interesting people, cultures and projects. The atmosphere for The Enactus World Cup was electric and this continued into the first evening where everyone attended the “Culture Fair” in the convention centre. Ireland, along with 35 other countries demonstrated their countries cultures, individuality and projects. During the fair Rebecca experienced dancing, singing, sports, games and music with many different cultures, describing it as a “festival atmosphere”. There were opportunities to network with the key sponsors of the event with Rebecca speaking to Lord Michael Hastings who is KPMG’s Head of Citizenship and Kees Kruythoff, President North America at Unilever and described it as “a great networking opportunity as people were so accessible and relaxed”. There were fantastic opportunities to network with the key influencers of large corporations and uplifting to see their support for the Enactus Initiative.

Day 2: Rebecca attended the group stages of the competition where she watched various countries present their inspiring projects to the judging panels. Rebecca saw NUI Maynooth proudly present their innovative and progressive ideas called “Access Earth”. Access Earth is essentially the Trip Advisor for individuals who have mobility issues e.g. Elderly, disabled, injured or parents with buggies. The app is a service that rates premises or attraction based on their accessibility. The announcements for the semi-finals were made the evening of the second day and unfortunately Team Ireland did not progress however they did Ireland extremely proud and it didn’t stop them from celebrating. Attending the presentations and listening to the projects from the other counties gave Rebecca a greater insight into the various types of projects being undertaken by students globally as well as highlighting the issues communities face locally in each country. That evening Rebecca attended the famous Dutch Party, this is a tradition where the Dutch team organise a night out for all the international participants and even corporate partners attending the Enactus World Cup.

Day 3: The final day saw the semi-finalists competing. Students were again invited to sit in on the presentations of the other countries. The judges narrowed the countries down to four: Morocco, Korea, USA, and the UK. The final four projects presented in the large conference hall that evening where over 3,000 students attended. The final projects tackled issues such as reducing internal pollution from cooking in the home which is responsible for 3 million deaths per year, helping combat malaria which claims the lives of approximately 2 million people per year, students educating ex-offenders on how to make quality, sought after garments in order to forge a future for themselves as Entrepreneurs, and improving sanitation solutions in villages where students were making liquid soap out of rotting bananas and avocados left at the side of the road. These were all extremely worthy projects and winners. 

The UK team was the overall winner with its innovative projects focusing on “Education, Equality and Empowerment”. The UK team had two impactful projects, “San Eco” which educates people on how to make reusable sanitary towels, nappies and incontinence pads. As well as making liquid soap, they also educated people on how to build composting toilets in a community in Africa. Their other project called “Right Light” encouraged individuals use solar lamps therefore eliminating the use of dangerous kerosene lamps which cause multiple fires and severe burns each year.