Enactus 2017

Enactus is an international organisation that pairs entrepreneurship and philanthropy to develop sustainable and beneficial projects in communities.

Enactus has predominantly been for university students and business leaders to date but Glasgow Caledonian University contacted Arran High School and invited them to become a branch of their Enactus group and the first high school in the UK, and possibly the world, to be involved.

When the Glasgow Caledonian Enactus team came to the school the fifth and sixth years had a brain storming session with them and together we complied a large list of issues that we feel need addressed on Arran. The key priority we identified was to get young people and older people working together to challenge two issues that impact on both age groups: isolation and mental health.

Being new to the Enactus family we perhaps didn’t understand fully what Enactus entailed, but after attending the annual World Cup it couldn’t have been clearer…

Enactus is made up of 70,500+ students from 1,700+ universities in 36 countries. Each year they hold a World Cup, hosted all around the world, which 3,500 students, business, academic and government leaders attend. This year, for the first time, it was held in London and we were invited to attend by Glasgow Caledonian University advisors Alec Wersun and Karen Fryer as well as our Business Advisor (and one of the panel of judges) Jean McInnes.

The World Cup took place over 3 days with 36 Enactus teams from around the world presenting their projects to observers and judges and explaining the impact they have had on their community, the changes they have made and what they are going to do next.

After a series of engaging presentations the original 36 teams were filtered down to the final four.

The focus of the different teams were really diverse ranging from food security to sanitation to women’s empowerment and this gave us valuable insight to the problems that affect our world.

As young people we often have a need, a desire to change the world and help – this couldn’t be more apparent at Enactus. By attending the world cup we were able to really understand first-hand the incredible impact that these students are making around the world and the positive changes they are bringing to their communities. Their passion, dedication and enthusiasm was inspiring and definitely set the tone for our project. The atmosphere of the entire competition was amazing, the excitement, the need for change, the support everyone had for each other.

As new members to the Enactus family we hope Arran High School can create a lasting impact and tackle the issues we feel need addressed with the same success and achievement we saw at the world cup.