Guest Post: Social Enterprise for a Day SE4D

Guest Post: Social Enterprise for a Day

The Business & Tourism department at MSVU is a community of people, experiences, opinions and voices. Our blog will reflect that community with the inclusion of guest bloggers who have stories to share of value to our community.
 
Today's guest blogger is Tanis Trainor, a first year BPR student who was selected to participant in the SE4D event. Her blog was written with the help of Brenna Hill, also a first year BPR student. 

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SE4D: Social Enterprise for a Day

This academic school year, Mount Saint Vincent University hosted Social Enterprise for a Day, a new conference focused on students.

A social enterprise is a not-for-profit enterprise that has a final goal of helping society. Students attended the conference from Mount Saint Vincent University, Dalhousie University, Saint Mary’s University, Nova Scotia Community College and various high schools in Halifax Regional Municipality. Students were split into groups on Friday, February 3rd and ran their enterprise on February 4th.

On Friday night, I was placed into the Black Team. Our team met and discussed what issues surround us on a day-to-day basis and brainstormed some possible solutions we could act on. We had a few really great ideas! But given the time frame (we had to launch it the very next day!) we decided to focus on the issue of bottled water.

In North America, we have access to the very clean tap water, yet we choose to pay over one dollar for water in a plastic bottle. By purchasing bottled water, we choose to act in an environmentally unfriendly way while others in the world struggle to have access to fresh water.

We decided to call our group @H2KnowH2O to raise awareness on this issue and developed a three point mission statement for our venture:

• H2Know H2O is a social enterprise venture created by youth who are looking to meaningfully engage in social change using entrepreneurial principles. Social enterprise creates profits, which are reinvested in efforts that support youth business experience, ecological sustainability, and philanthropic goals. Social enterprise ventures encourage a “triple bottom line” and socially responsible model for industry. Supporting H2Know supports social enterprise.

• H2Know H2O is advocating the reduction of bottled water usage. By targeting elimination of plastic water bottles we are promoting corporate and social responsibility that acknowledges the impacts of industry on our natural systems. Pledging support to H2Know H20 is not simply a monetary investment in a social enterprise. Supporting H2Know raises awareness to reduce consumption impacts on environmental degradation.

• H2Know H20’s campaign fosters a culture of mindful actions pertaining to global water systems. By raising funds through social enterprise, H2Know is able to invest in developing nations to create potable wells and safe water systems. Supporting H2Know allows business and industry to improve human living conditions and quality of life.

With our mission in hand, it was time to come up with a plan!

We decided to run a water taste test! With a table set up at Halifax Shopping Center on Saturday afternoon, we approached shoppers and ask them to “take the test”. We “tested” customers on both filtered Brita water and bottled water to see if they could taste the difference. Most shoppers could not tell the difference and if they could, we asked them if the difference was strong enough for them to spend large sums of their money per bottle as well as negatively contributing to environment. Their response was consistently NO. We also had information and fact sheets laid out to raise awareness of the real impacts of bottled water.

After the taste test we asked shoppers to also “take the pledge”. We printed off a pledge sheet and asked customers to sign their name in efforts to help reduce bottled water consumption. Most shoppers happily agreed! We also accepted donations to sponsor the building of a well in a developing country. In our three-hour time frame we raised over $300 dollars to donate to our cause.

This “Social Enterprise for a Day” was a truly rewarding experience with a great cause for each individual group. There were teams all over Halifax who dealt with socially important issues in innovative ways and raised money for their causes.

In the end, we had a lot of time to bond as a team and we came out with an amazing feeling of contributing to a good cause!