Enactus team places third at national pitch competition

An innovative community service platform developed by Salve Regina students that partners volunteer resources with important projects needing support placed third in the “Early Stage Competition” at USA Expo, a national pitch competition hosted by Enactus.

Enactus provides a platform for college students to develop their leadership skills through a network of global business, academic and student leaders unified by a vision to create a better, more sustainable world. Each year, Enactus holds a national exposition and competition that allows students from universities across the country to showcase innovative projects that are solving the pressing issues of the world.

The project presented by Salve Regina’s Enactus team, “Students Serving Students: Connecting Great Minds,” caught the attention of competition judges not only for engaging Salve student volunteers with projects in the local community, but also for its scalability to connect students with similar projects in communities around the world.

“This type of platform has Enactus written all over it,” wrote one judge. “Kudos for developing the idea. Perhaps in the not too distant future, Enactus itself will acquire ‘Students Serving Students’ and offer it to all global teams.”

Recognizing the hardships triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the students wanted to create a platform to support the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals by giving students everywhere access to templates of past projects so they can be implemented in other disadvantaged communities worldwide.

“The importance of human connection has been understood worldwide like never before,” said Miranda Benoit, Enactus president. “As an Enactus team, we have prioritized staying connected through our own projects. We now are working to connect Enactus teams and students around the world. This is the foundation to our project. We have developed a plan to ensure that the resourcefulness of individuals and their creative solutions can be accessible and replicated elsewhere.”

This year, Salve Regina’s Enactus team partnered with the nonprofit Universal Promise, which provides individuals and institutions in underserved regions with the academic resources needed to ensure educational and career opportunities that will promote just, civil and hopeful societies.

Enactus created a digital fundraiser via Instagram to help Universal Promise generate resources to supplement students’ classrooms. The team developed a posting strategy and created multiple graphics to collect donations.

Moving forward, the students are working on website prototypes that will feature a network and project database. They are studying methods of tracking engagement, creating pitching space for organizations to advertise and redistribute profits into the project database, and strategizing a subscription service for premium project templates.

“Ultimately, the ‘Students Serving Students’ platform will have a positive impact on communities around the world, and it has the potential to impact people exponentially by implementing successful projects over and over again in other communities,” Benoit said. “In light of the hardships faced in the past year, we have created this project to connect the world’s most prominent problems with the solutions they need.”

In addition to Benoit, executive board members for the Enactus team include Grace Lamagna, vice president; Annie Southard, secretary; Caroline (Nella) Chapell, treasurer; Saarah Papineau, vice president of social outreach and project manager for Universal Promise; Jett Hughes, vice president of competition; and Jasper Khambaylarsirikul, vice president of technology.