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Priorities:Swarthmore College Student Priorities

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At Swarthmore College, we have experienced an apparent lack of opportunity for socially minded entrepreneurs. As such, we will be working with faculty, students, and other institutional partners to develop Swarthmore’s new Social Innovation Lab. The following individual projects will all be operated within the Social Innovation Lab. Note: We believe we have failed if only Swarthmore students and faculty are using the Innovation Lab. Therefore, community engagement is essential to our mission.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 700; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Strategic Priority #1 (Omri2017): Incentivise Swarthmore students to engage in social entrepreneurship and innovation

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Given Swarthmore student’s passion for social change, there is immense potential to harness this energy and channel it towards social innovation.<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Currentlyhowever, the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Swarthmore does not provide enough opportunity (or incentive) for students to engage in social entrepreneurship/innovation.

Strategic Priority #2 (Natasha2017): Make Entrepreneurship Tangible It is really important to us that “social entrepreneurship” is more than just a nebulous idea at Swarthmore. We want to go beyond the buzzwords, and give students an opportunity to actually apply all that they learn about design thinking. During the Stanford course, we have really appreciated the focus on prototyping - we<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">plangive Swarthmore a workable “prototype” of a successful social enterprise on campus.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Project: Student Run Social Enterprise - Environmentally Sustainable Cafe We plan to launch a<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">student run, environmentally sustainable café inside the social innovation lab. We plan to serve coffee, tea, espresso, and baked goods out of a small part of our makerspace. The café will be fully managed by students, with a focus on environmental stewardship--we will use all compostable materials and source our food locally and sustainably. Many new buildings are being constructed in the northern part of campus with no food nearby, so we hope that the café will serve an emerging need. When we talked to students about our idea, there was a lot of excitement around the café - there is no good coffee on campus, students told us, and they are really excited that the café is going to have an environmental focus.

Strategic Priority #2.1 (Hanan2018): Supporting<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Student LedInitiatives

A student-led cafe, previously known to students as Paces Cafe, was an occasional late night food option to students on campus. After years of growing, the cafe has taken on a new location, a bigger menu, and extended hours. Newly named as The Crumb Cafe, this late night eatery is open seven nights a week, offering a larger range of sandwiches, snacks, drinks, and meal items due to student access to and new use of the Sharples dining hall kitchen facility. The move has opened up additional opportunities for interested students to work at the cafe. The Crumb Cafe is also more accessible to all types of students on campus. Whereas the old cafe only accepted campus points, the renovated Crumb Cafe accepts a wide variety of meal plan options, such as Swat Points, Garnet Cash, Dining Dollars, and the late night meal swipe that every student has. Additionally, the Crumb Cafe is an environmentally sustainable cafe by using all compostable materials.

Strategic Priority #3 (Mariam2017): Develop spin-off opportunities to support more mature entrepreneurs at Swarthmore College by nurturing student enterprises/groups/projects/student groups using Impact Investing <span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Need: As a result of the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship project mapping at Swarthmore College, we identified a dire lack of spin-off opportunities (3-5 years support plans) that would spur and scale projects that have survived the test of time. The immediate need that we investigated is the scarcity of funding needed to scale the strategic and operational activities of a business/enterprise/organization/student groups that are past the initial forming stages of their venture.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Solution: Impact Investing Group The goal of the Impact Investing project is to invest a fund (that will initially originate out of a grant/endowment from Swarthmore College). This fund will be initially invested by pro bono Swarthmore alumni investors while abiding by the social, governmental, environmental principles of Impact Investing. Over the course of a couple of years, returns on investments will be allocated to the spin-off fund that Swarthmore entrepreneurs can apply for. The returns generated from the investments will financially support more mature Swarthmore entrepreneurs at their spinout/scaling stages. In parallel, students at the Swarthmore Investing club can gain educational and practical experience in investing by giving assistance to the pro bono Swarthmore alumni investors network. They will be the guardians of the Impact Investing fund. This educational partnership will secure a pipeline of socially minded-investors that are making returns for Swarthmore entrepreneurs.

*Swarthmore Investment Club: will be exposed to best practices in Impact Investing. They will support and assist pro bono investors of the Impact Investing project. This educational experience will ensure the sustainability of the pro bono investor pipeline.

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'''Strategic Priority #3.1 (Lamia 2018):'''Develop spin-off opp'''ortunities to support more mature entrepreneurs at Swarthmore College by''''''connecting these entrepreneurs to the resources needed for them to accelerate in the ‘real world’.''' ''''''Though certain spin off opportunities do currently exist, they are not sufficient, and it is difficult for developing entrepreneurs to really grow and scale both through the resources offered as Swarthmore and beyond the school campus. The need for spin-off opportunities could most easily take the form of a program that connects certain budding entrepreneurs who have gone through earlier resources from the College to existing opportunities beyond the school. ''Project:''Swarthmore Entrepreneur in Residence Program Objective Help accelerate projects or business being run by current Swarthmore students or recent graduates by giving student entrepreneurs a space to develop their businesses on campus and access to resources needed to scale beyond Swarthmore. Potential Components *Business network - connection to established UX designers, marketing freelance, other entrepreneurs in the industry etc. *Connection to real investors - alum network, potential opportunity to pitch in front of them *~~Strategic Priority #4~~ Connection to other pitch competitions (~~Michelle~~including some that other students have already pitched at and have connections to)ex. Global Startup Ecosystem, University Startup World Cup, *Scholarship opportunities to real business accelerators like Draper University, Y Combinator, 500 Startups etc. in San Francisco and elsewhere<ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><li><span style="font-size: 11pt; background-color: ~~Make Entrepreneurship Collaborative rather than Competitive~~transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Funding for summer cohort in these accelerators as an additional option for "summer impact funding"</li><br/ul><li>Accepting credit for programs like Draper University towards an entrepreneurship course (Under Economics? Peace & Conflict studies?) -- longer term goal</li><li>Office space on campus for established student-run business - business address and temporary space for team establishment</li></ul> Some of these resources may exist independently under different programs or as autonomous activities, but there is no formalised means of connecting them and centralising the steps for a mature entrepreneur to scale beyond Swarthmore. Strategic Priority #4 (Michelle 2017): Make Entrepreneurship Collaborative rather than Competitive <span style="background-color: transparent; font-~~variant~~family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-~~ligatures~~size: 11pt; color: ~~normal~~rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As college students, we are often told that we have to do a million things, from balancing classes to athletics to clubs. On top of our immense workload, we are often fed the notion that we have to "find our calling" in the next 4 years. In the midst of all of these insane expectations leveraged against us, we often forget is that what we truly need is a <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0)~~; background-color: transparent~~; font-weight: 700; font-style: italic~~; font-variant-ligatures: normal~~; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mentor<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0)~~; background-color: transparent; font-variant-ligatures: normal~~; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-- someone who is there to support us and cheer us on, no matter what we do.~~~~

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Project: TriConnect - Peer-to-peer mentoring website TriConnect is a mentoring website that helps students in the Tri-College Consortium (Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr) tap into the untapped network of mentors, aka the amazing students that attend these three esteemed colleges. Students start by creating a profile, listing all of their affiliations (majors, clubs, interests etc.) and what they can offer mentorship in and what they are seeking to be mentored in (i.e. a CS student looking for someone more involved in the Tri-Co entrepreneurship environment). Once a profile is created, they can reach out to other students on the network to set up meals, attend events together etc.

The Impact of “TriConnect”: By creating a platform that directly fosters peer-to-peer mentorship, TriConnect hopes to not only empower<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">individuals,but also shift school culture from one that is hyper-competitive and often cutthroat to one that is more collaborative and supportive. We hope that this will lead to benefits in student mental health and physical well-being, all the while cultivating student entrepreneurship and innovation.

<div> </div></div><div>Strategic Priority #4.1 (Cassandra2018): Landscape Update and Further Collaboration Opportunities</div> <div>There are many different opportunities to get involved with various facets of entrepreneurship on campus. These include organizations such as SWIFT, LaunchDeck, 180 Consulting, and WiCS+. While it is great to have all these existing programs, itis also meansthat entrepreneurship efforts are divided among all these clubs. This, in a sense, heightens the sense of "competition" Michelle addressed last year. As entrepreneurial resources grow on campus, it is critical that we create initiatives to get these groups to work together. </div><div> Student Government Organization Committees Swarthmore's SGO has many committees that handle bringing various student groups together in other to help move the campus community forward as a whole. As entrepreneurship opportunities become a high priority for students on campus, it would be beneficial for SGO to create a Standing Committee on Entrepreneurship, which would involve weekly meetings with the leaders of the entrepreneurial groups of campus. </div><div> Cross-Group Peer to Peer Mentorship While Michelle's Peer-to-Peer program focused on resources available to the greater TriCo community, I am interested in fostering collaboration within the institution by establishing a similar mentoring program to connect members across the aforementioned entrepreneurial groups. By doing so, we would be able to encourage the sharing of ideas and resources across these organizations and reduce the existingbeauricraticlandscape of entrepreneurship and innovation that exists at Swarthmore College.</div></div>

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Swarthmore_College_Student_Priorities Swarthmore College Student Priorities]

2018 Swarthmore University Innovation Fellows

Hanan Ahmad

Cassandra Stone 

Lamia Makkar

2017 Swarthmore University Innovation Fellows

Lamiamakkar

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