Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour

The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour (EET) went to McPherson College in Kansas this weekend to inspire and educate students about the power of social entrepreneurship. The college is taking massive action to bring entrepreneurship to their entire campus by creating entrepreneurship-based events for its students.

The college is also working on an entrepreneurship curriculum that will be available in Spring 2011. In the meantime, the college has created The Global Enterprise Challenge (GEC), which is a program that includes 40-50 of McPherson’s top students competing to create a social enterprise in Haiti. The students are broken up into 8-10 groups and have been working with one another all semester. The group with the best idea will go to Haiti in the summer to help their Haitian partners plan and implement their specific project, which will contribute to the country’s social and economic development. Many of the students in the competition do not have business backgrounds, so the college asked the Extreme Tour to help the students turn their ideas in to sustainable businesses.

The EET worksop was focused on idea creation and customer development. As well as motivating the Global Enterprise Challenge participants, the tour helped each group work through their ideas so they would be prepared to present to the judges.

The tour keynote speaker was Rebecca Kousky, founder and Executive Director of Nest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to changing the lives of women in developing countries. She shared her experiences and helped the GEC participants realize the importance of understanding international cultures. The students were able to ask her questions and receive personal feedback to help them with their own social enterprise. The GEC students will be presenting their ideas today (November 18).