Three days and thirteen universities across Australia shared one same goal: winning an opportunity to represent Australia at the Enactus World Cup 2019 in San Jose, the United States. It was the 2019 Enactus National Conference and Competition hosted at the Sofitel Hotel in Sydney that I was fortunate to spend a couple of days with the amazing Enactus QUT team.
A team of seven students with support from Faculty Advisor, Jess Kelly, and two projects: Best Foot Forward and The Unknown Project. Best Foot Forward aims to provide authentic wearable indigenous art igniting pride in indigenous culture and bridging the indigenous literacy gap. The project is also where all Australians can share in stories from the Dreamtime and purchase authentic indigenous products. The profit generated through sales is used to support indigenous Australians.
The second project presented in 2019 Enactus Competition was The Unknown Project, which I have a pleasure to be part of. It was founded by two young and driven student leaders Rory McGahan and Olivia Roney and seeks to support young people with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds. Each five-dollar profit from every book sold makes a great impact on those people’s lives with vital educational resources. Moreover, The Unknown Project has a mission that raises public awareness of the difficulties people with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds are facing.
To work on and learn about these social entrepreneurial projects over the last few months was a great experience for me, likewise to work with the talented and amazing Enactus QUT members as they pitched this project to Enactus Australia’s panellists was great. This two day competition was memorable because it witnessed the fifth time in a row that Enactus QUT was in the finals.
Although the Enactus team from the University of Melbourne (who were making an incredible effort to reduce plastic usage) was the 2019 winner, Enactus Competition is always different due to its spirit. The inspiration from Enactus, an organisation focusing and promoting entrepreneurial action with social impact, brought our team together as well as other like-minded students from universities across Australia to make a great change in people’s lives. Accordingly, we were all the winners.
And what about myself? My journey started from a non-English speaking background person (yes, I have studied English for around five years), challenged myself to pitch in front of judges at QUT for a chance to represent Enactus QUT at Nationals. Even though I was unsuccessful to be one of the presenters on the stage, I was delighted to document the QUT team on our journey to the final round through the content delivered on social media.
After the 2019 Enactus Nationals, I began the new chapter with Enactus by officially getting involved as one of the executives. With this opportunity, not only am I able to support current projects like Best Foot Forward and The Unknown Project, but also nurture social entrepreneurship spirit for myself and young future leaders who want to make the world become a better place.
1 Comment
Well done, Huan 🙂 Keep it up!