About Us
Today, many students enter UM with a personal passion to effect social change. For socially conscious engineers, they often design devices or solutions to impact disadvantaged communities (e.g. water filtration system or a medical device to address maternal and infant health issues).
However, these innovations are often only developed to a prototype stage. As a result, the opportunity for long term impact is limited.
In fairness to the communities that open themselves to our students, much can be gained by helping students think and create beyond the prototype stage and towards long-term implementation.
We believe that the answer to this need is social entrepreneurship.
Social entrepreneurs create enterprises that target an underprivileged and underserved population to distribute and/or source its much needed products or services. A social enterprise must have specific social objective and seek long-term self-financing.
To empower UM students to pursue social entrepreneurial achievements that improve peoples lives and drive societal change, the Center for Entrepreneurship has launched the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative.
The overall goals of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative are the following:
- Educate UM undergrads and graduate students on the principles and concepts of social entrepreneurship;
- Support the development of breakthrough, low cost technologies and innovations that can effect social change in both domestic and international contexts;
- Incubate and launch viable social ventures from within the UM community; and
- Influence other schools and programs on social entrepreneurship.