JOIN USStudents of Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies (SSCBS), Delhi University, are a jubilant lot these days.
The SSCBS wing of Enactus – an international non-profit organisation which assists students with social projects – has won the Enactus India National Competition held in Mumbai earlier this month.
They are now preparing to fly to Beijing, China, in October to compete with several hundred Enactus teams from universities across the world and bring the prestigious Enactus World Cup trophy home.
ENACTUS – which stands for Entrepreneurship, Action and Us (the team) – is an international community of academic and business leaders which mobilises college students to come up with projects to benefit the underprivileged.
Starting with the Missouri University in US, in 1975, Enactus has grown to include over 2,000 colleges worldwide on its rolls. In India, several colleges and universities have Enactus wings including almost all constituent colleges of DU, several IITs, IIMs, the Vellore Institute of Technology and the Narsee Monjee College n Mumbai.
In fact, it is this variety in educational institutions and their social welfare projects which makes the annual Enactus India National Competition a real challenge and the winners real proud.
SSCBS Enactus runs three projects which have benefitted a large number of disadvantaged people since 2009.
Their Akshar Project involves collecting wastepaper from various companies, colleges and RWAs; getting them recycled and then bound into fresh notebooks by child victims of drug abuse and human trafficking. The notebooks are then sold back to the same organisations.
In ‘Sanitation Solutions’, the students acquire sanitary napkins at cheap prices and then sell them to village and slum women at affordable costs.
This is besides the education and awareness classes they hold at such places with regard to menstrual and personal hygiene. Under ‘Gramoddhar’, the young social workers have adopted a village Ghamroj in Haryana and run several income generation schemes there.
The students say it is the success of these three diversified and large-scale projects which impressed the judges.
“There were 37 teams from all over India and divided into leagues to be judged in various rounds,” said Aantika Tandon, member SSCBS Enactus and a student of Bachelor of Management Studies in the college.
“We had to give presentations and lectures on our projects and how they have progressed over time. After we were chosen the winners of Enactus India National Competition, the judges said they were proud that young college students were doing so much for the socially deprived,” she said.
It is notable that the competition took place in Taj Lands End hotel in Mumbai over two days and the judges were heads of top notch companies like KPMG, Unilever, Coke, Mahindra and Mahindra, HSBC etc.
Another excited student Prince Aditya added, “We are very happy at this achievement and so are our teachers and guardians. We are now preparing to repeat the feat in Beijing. We are reworking our presentations, expanding our projects and also reading up on the foreign teams that will compete with us there.”
“We are all ready to crown India the winner of Enactus World Cup this time.”