Joint Humanitarian Entrepreneurship Summer Academy 2021 to Achieve SDGs Virtually

The Joint Humanitarian Entrepreneurship Summer Academy 2021 was conducted from 31st May to 25th June 2021. This four-week remote learning experience attracted students majoring in a wide variety of fields. The 34 students participating in the program were from 13 different countries spread over 4 continents. The program focused on enhancing the learning by using flipped learning and the class sessions were exclusively for workshops, discussion, and sharing. This year the projects focused on United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and tried to understand, evaluate and address some of the challenges around economic and environmental sustainability in Uganda and tackle some of the emerging trends which pose a serious challenge to sustainability like fast fashion.   

In the first week, students were introduced to various design tools which helped them to explore the problems they were interested in exploring. In week two the concepts of digging into data, the ecosystem for any given product or service, and oneself were explored in depth.

Week three focused on creating sustainable business models, developing the product road map along with effective ways of communicating ‘WHY?’ the product or service exists. Week four rounded out the whole process by aiding students to evaluate the future of the organization they were creating. What are the exit strategy for them and the company? What is the impact they create in the community and ecosystems of the product or service?

This was supplemented with fully flipped supplementary training on Arduino, 3D-Printing, and Rapid Prototyping. 

The students designed questionnaires that were implemented through our partner organizations on the ground and online surveys to probe various stakeholders to get a deeper understanding of the problem at hand. The student groups connected with mentors, NGOs, and other organizations who have been working on the respective projects to learn from their experiences and what might be some of the effective strategies to develop impactful solutions.  

The students focused on the process of working on the challenge and not on the ultimate product or output as the main learning objective was to provide an immersive experience on the problem-solving process. The teams’ final presentations can be found below.

 

Plastic Recycle Project to achieve SDG11, SDG12, and SDG13
(The project aims to raise funds to reduce plastics waste)

 

Sustainable Fast Fashion Project to achieve SDG11, SDG12, SDG13, and SDG14
(The project aims to create a policy proposal to the local government and industry in the future)

 

Recycle Used Clothes and Reduce Fast Fashion Mentality to achieve SDG9,  SDG11, SDG12, and SDG13
(The project aims to promote sustainable consumption and reduce fashion waste)

 

Team Green Project to Achieve SDG1, SDG7, SDG11, and SDG12
(The aim of the project is to distribute green energy resources to the developing countries)

 

Farmer's Cooperative Uganda Project to Achieve SDG1, SDG4, and SDG8
(The aim of the project is to improve farmers' income and implement effective ways for organic farming)

 

3DP Project to Support Uganda to Achieve SDG1, SDG4, and SDG8
(The aim of the project is to implement 3D Filament making from plastic bottles in Uganda to increase employment rate and decrease plastic waste )

 

The students in the program are from Lingnan University and other Universities, including

• American University in Bulgaria 
• American College of Greece – Deree 
• BISLA (Bratislava international school of liberal arts) 
• Forman Christian College, Pakistan 
• Hope College, USA 
• John Cabot University, Italy 
• Lingnan University, Hong Kong SAR 
• New York University-Shanghai, China 
• Ohio Wesleyan University, USA 
• University of San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador