05 Keele Management School News
Enactus
KMS Students tackle the problems faced by homeless people and by children with low confidence‘ Through the student led global enterprise organisation, Enactus, students aim to create social enterprise and community projects. Most Enactus students at Keele are studying in KMS and so are able to employ a range of management skills to design and initiate projects, support the beneficiaries and ultimately develop projects into self-sufficient enterprises.’
Since May 2015 the society at Keele has reinvigorated itself, raised £ 2,000 and developed two important and ambitious new projects: the‘ School of Confidence’ and‘ Fabrabag’.
The School of Confidence( SoC) aims to tackle the problem of low confidence and lack of soft skills for students in the Stoke-on-Trent area. The Enactus team, together with Keele’ s Student Support, Careers and IT has developed a series of workshops on leadership, team building, self-motivation, communication, time management and employability skills, all of which are suitably tailored to each age group. All members of the Enactus team have had DBS checks and are ready to deliver these workshops for a trial period before launching the project fully in September 2016.
The second project‘ Fabrabag’, aims to provide skills to the homeless in the local area helping to improve their employability. The Fabrabag team partnered with Brighter Futures, a local charity, to highlight the problem that some homeless people can lack the hard and soft skills which could help them to find work and improve their standard of living. The project also addresses the issue of the amount of textiles and clothing which go to waste across the UK. Put together, these issues created the idea of making a‘ Fabrabag’ to provide skills such as dressmaking as well as soft skills such as teamwork and communication.
Business), the group received sponsorship from KMS to help with travel expenses for competition and training events. This allowed ten members of the team to attend the regional competition at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Manchester and the national competition in London. Xiao explained“ KMS funding has enabled us to educate and create awareness for more members about Enactus and really make Enactus Keele more established and competitive as a university team nationally and within Keele itself.”
Enactus does not only provide personal development for students, but it also helps make a difference to many people in the community. Students are able to socialise with a diverse group of likeminded people, network with large sponsor organisations such as Amazon, Tesco and KPMG and have access to leadership training provided by Enactus alumni and sponsor companies. All of which aids their career prospects, as they develop transferable skills, crucial in any profession.
Fabrabag made it to the final round in the Wilkos Individual Topic Competition after which clothes banks were set up in four local Wilkos stores to collect material and to create brand awareness. The Fabrabag team hopes to set up sale streams through the Student’ s Union and Wilkos. Each bag will have a photo of who made it, their story and how Fabrabag has helped them.
Supported by KMS Lecturer in International Business, Dr Paweł Capik, who is also the personal tutor of Enactus’ vice-president Xiao Ren( BA Accounting and International