Salve Regina’s Enactus team places third at 2021 national competition

An innovative community service platform developed by Salve Regina students that partners volunteer resources with important projects needing support was awarded third place in the Early Stage Competition at the Enactus USA National Exposition 2021.

Enactus is an organization that provides a platform for NextGen Leaders to develop leadership skills. They do this by working with leading companies worldwide using 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 to help students from universities across the country showcase innovative projects that are solving the pressing issues of the world.

The “Students Serving Students: Connecting Great Minds” project presented by the Salve Regina Enactus team members caught the attention of competition judges — not only for functioning to engage Salve Regina student volunteers with projects in the local community, but 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.”

Salve Regina Enactus unpacked their project in a video. They have been awarded third place in the Early Stage Competition. 

Recognizing the hardships triggered by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Salve Regina 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, ’22, the Salve Regina Enactus chapter’s 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, ‘Students Serving Students: Connecting Great Minds.’ 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 Enactus partnered with the Newport 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 stories to help Universal Promise generate monetary resources to supplement students’ classrooms. The Enactus team developed a posting strategy and created multiple graphics to collect donations.

Pictured are members of the Salve Regina Enactus team in the 2020-21 academic year.

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 Salve Regina Enactus team include Grace Lamagna ’23, vice president; Annie Southard ’23, secretary; Caroline (Nella) Chapell ’23, treasurer; Saarah Papineau ’23, vice president of social outreach and project manager for Universal Promise; Jett Hughes ’23, vice president of competition; and Jasper Khambaylarsirikul ’21, vice president of technology.