Emily Bland and Neala Kielley are key members and alumni, respectively, of Enactus Memorial, a student-run organization based out of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Enactus Memorial starts projects that provide entrepreneurial solutions to global problems. The main goal of Enactus Memorial is to empower others to have sustainable businesses. As a result, Enactus Memorial starts projects and then hands them off to other socially conscious organizations. As the current President of Enactus Memorial, Emily explains her main responsibility:
“My major role is coming up with new projects and finding out how we can innovate as university students in order to implement the ideas. To date, I have helped found and co-found four projects.”
Neala Kielley
Neala, the former Vice President of Enactus Memorial, says their team adds an “entrepreneurial twist” to starting projects. Both Emily and Neala are Bachelor of Commerce majors and as a recent graduate, Neala is now studying law at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. Emily is scheduled to graduate in May 2017 and hopes to continue to work with some of the social ventures she has helped establish.
Emily grew up in a farming background and has been interested in hydroponics since she was twelve years old. Her early role models include her parents and grandparents, who were entrepreneurs. It was because of their influence that pushed her towards social entrepreneurship:
“I was a part of the Entrepreneurial Olympics in high school and I helped my grandfather with a start-up a couple of years ago.”
One project Emily and Neala have been involved with is AGreenCulture, which targets the problem of diminishing farmland in Newfoundland by creating a Green Audit Program for the agriculture sector. This program’s aim is to help farmers save money and the environment.
Emily is also involved with Project SucSeed, which addresses the overwhelming need for fresh affordable produce in Newfoundland.
One of Enactus Memorial’s most successful projects is The Prince’s Operation Entrepreneur (POE). POE is a national program of The Prince’s Charities Canada that offers aid to medically discharged members of the Canadian Armed Forces who are interested in starting their own business. The support that POE offers comes in the form of education, financing, and mentoring. The program offers a variety of options; there are seven-day boot camps, one-day workshops, and a mentoring and financing course. According to Neala, POE contributes the most revenue to Enactus Memorial, making a total of $2,352,020.00 last year.
In Neala’s second year of university she took an advanced social entrepreneurship course called New Venture Creation, which asked students to create a social enterprise for their final project. She also took another course called Social Enterprise, which requires students to work with a real social enterprise in St. John’s. Neala states:
“The courses at Memorial University are very experiential based and that is the main reason I got involved with social entrepreneurship and Enactus Memorial.”
Presently, both Emily and Neala identify as social innovators as they are technically not running their own social enterprises. However, Emily hopes to be a social entrepreneur in the future.
Neala mentions Newfoundlander Alison Halleran as an entrepreneurial inspiration. Alison started her own clothing boutique five years ago called Opal and Onyx and Neala says she is “very visionary”.
Emily gains entrepreneurial information from subscribing to Forbes and Business Insider. Neala reads Memorial University’s website for information and obtains ideas from pitch competitions and meeting people in the social entrepreneurial space.
Emily’s plans for the next three months in terms of the next stage of her work with Enactus Memorial are optimizing production marketing (social media and PR), crowd-funding campaigns, and securing more funders.
You can follow Emily, Neala, & Enactus Memorial on Twitter: @Emily_Bland, @nealz14, @Enactus_MUN respectively.
[box] A New Chapter of Storytelling
Increasingly, we are seeing that some of the greatest advances in social entrepreneurship and social innovation are coming from students. These stories are being lived, but they are rarely told. As a result, RECODE and the Trico Charitable Foundation are collaborating to survey and interview leading examples of Canadian post-secondary students who are developing social enterprises (for profit or not for profit).
It is hoped this research will inform our efforts to help Canada’s post-secondary institutions lead the way in supporting student social entrepreneurs and social innovators. But more than that, it will lead to a series of blogs capturing the students’ journeys. These stories will “reveal how process and purpose can converge to power a new economy for social and ecological impact” and, hopefully, inspire and inform social entrepreneurs within and beyond our Universities.
