UCD team reaches final four of global social entrepreneurship competition

A student team from University College Dublin made it to the final four of the Enactus World Cup, held in Beijing, to honour social and community outreach projects.

The UCD team joined groups from Morocco, Puerto Rico and China in the final round after beating off entries from 32 other countries.

The eventual winner was the Chinese team with their project, titled Green Power Makes a Better Life for Nomads.

The 18-member UCD team won the Enactus National Competition earlier this year. Six of the team – Aoife Buckley, Roisín Lee, Stephanie O’Malley, Patricia Kastner, Cian O’Sullivan and Andrea Harvey – presented their project, Generation Accommodation, to a panel of almost 130 global CEOs and an audience of 5,000 people.

Generation Accommodation is an accommodation service that matches and connects dependable students with elderly homeowners, to alleviate loneliness and isolation in the elderly community and combat the lack of affordable housing for Irish university students.

The finalists were evaluated based on how successful they were at using business concepts to improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need.

“Our team didn’t expect to get as far as we did,” said leader Aoife Buckley. “[The competition] was the best experience I’ve had ever, because we were up against countries that have been competing for years. Ireland is the latest country to join the Enactus network, and Generation Accommodation was the youngest project in competition.”

Twelve UCD students have been matched with homeowners since the project began in May.

“We hope to increase our database and expand it going into the summer months,” Ms Buckley said. “We want to include the other universities in Dublin by September 2015 and go nationwide by the following year.

“We’ve had interest from Galway and Cork, asking if the service is available there.”

Enactus is an international non-profit organisation that provides a platform for university teams to create community development projects, while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders of the future.