University of Nottingham crowned Enactus UK 2019 national champion

15th April 2019

On the 8th and 9th April, the top 32 Enactus teams from across the UK competed in the 2019 Enactus UK National Expo at the ExCeL, London.

The dynamic, energy-filled event brought together 650 university students, 70 academics, and over 300 senior UK business leaders across two days in celebration of Youth Social Action. Key note speakers included Tamsyn Brewster and Farrah AIHaddad from RefuAid, and Social Entrepreneur Liam Black who all inspired the audience by sharing their own social enterprise journey.

Enactus teams competed over two days for the title of 2019 Enactus UK National Champion, showcasing their social and community projects to business executives serving as judges. The students were evaluated on how successfully they applied business concepts and an entrepreneurial approach to improve the quality of life of those in need. The final round judging panel comprised of over 80 senior business and social sector executives from more than 65 organisations.

Enactus Nottingham won the competition after showcasing three of their inspirational social enterprises; Foodprint, a social supermarket in Nottingham providing low cost food to those living in food poverty, CodeX, which provides coding classes to neurodiverse students in Nottingham and SANkofa SANitation which aims to improve hygiene standards and living conditions across impoverished communities in Ghana.

Fringe events included an Entrepreneur pitch to help develop and invite support for social enterprise graduate start-ups, an EEUK networking event for University Academics, an Enterprise & Employability Fair and a Project Exhibition in which the students showcased their flagship social action projects.

The winning teams of the sponsored Individual Topic Competitions were also announced which amounted to over £75,000 of grant funding awarded by Enactus UK to university teams on behalf of its corporate partners.

Enactus Nottingham will now go on to represent Enactus UK in the 2019 Enactus World Cup in Silicon Valley, USA on the 16th-18th September

Iain Patton, CEO at EAUC and one of the judges at this year’s competition said: "It is reassuring to see such passionate cross-discipline students using their creative flair and ingenuity to find solutions to so many eco and social problems through business enterprise. The bright initiatives show how important is for students to have the opportunity to step out of the classroom and develop first-hand skills and the perspective that is essential to responsible leadership in an ever-more complicated and challenging world."

We at EAUC are proud to have partnered with Enactus and develop a new institutional volunteering role - EAUC Sustainability Advisor (SA).
We strongly believe this will be a great opportunity for EAUC members to connect with a group of sustainability engaged students and colleagues, to collaborate and develop further projects together.

Through this role you will be able to:
1) Connect Enactus student teams with existing sustainability initiatives on campus and
2) Provide sustainability insights and expert advice to existing Enactus projects.

If you want to become the EAUC Sustainability Advisor for your Enactus team and support these exceptional student-led sustainability initiatives, please follow the instructions below and contact Enactus UK via Rosie Connolly - rconnolly@enactus.org. 

ENDS