King's wins award for social entrepreneurship support
King’s has received a SEE Change Recognition Award from UnLtd and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) for its work supporting social entrepreneurs.
The awards recognise the achievement of staff, students and graduates in the Higher Education sector in setting up social ventures and supporting social entrepreneurs to thrive.
King’s was praised for its innovative approach, and the variety and multidisciplinary nature of its support. Cross-campus support ranges from taught courses, talks and seminars from leading practitioners, to competitions and the flagship Social Entrepreneurship Initiative - a collaboration between the department of International Development and School of Management & Busines.
Students can also join award-winning Enactus KCL, a society inspiring students to take entrepreneurial action to create a better world.
King’s has active collaborations with global universities including Tel Aviv University, the University of Osaka and Yunus Centre, and is a member of a research collaboration with Arizona State University and the University of New South Wales examining the role of social enterprise in delivering the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Later this year Julie Devonshire OBE, Director of the Entrepreneurship Institute, will host a panel at the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit, held at King's, on ‘Collaborating for a Better World.’
Examples of social ventures founded by the King’s community include a low-cost childcare service for overworked mothers, fashion brand improving the livelihoods of small-scale African designers, SMS-based logistics marketplace to lower the cost for smallholder farmers taking produce to market in East Africa, and Enactus KCL’s project Light Mountain which distributes clean cookstoves to low-income families in Tanzania, already improving the lives of over 400 people.
Dr Bhavagaya Bakshi, King's alumna and Cofounder of C the Signs, an Artificial Intelligence-enabled application reducing the rate of late diagnosis of cancer, currently on the Entrepreneurship Institute’s King’s20 accelerator was awarded UnLtd’s Highly Commended Social Entreprenuer 2017.
Ed Halliday, Accelerator Manager, Entrepreneurship Institute said,
“In the current climate there is an urgent need for organisations to rethink the alignment between commercial goals and their impact on the world around them. This is an important part of our work at King’s: social impact is not only a growing area of interest to our students but also a cornerstone of the university's strategy, to act ‘In Service to Society.
We are proud to be thinking differently about how to inspire and support our students to think about major societal problems in an entrepreneurial way: by broadening their horizons, supporting them with expert mentorship, workspace and funding to build ideas, and promoting collaboration between institutions at both a national and international level. We are excited about growing this work into the future."