[Source]Our team representing our school, CK. Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Navrongo
Background
If you don’t know, ENACTUS means Entrepreneurial Action Us. Entrepreneurial Action in us as students.
ENACTUS is basically a campus social club, but in this one we learn and develop entrepreneurial skills through developing ideas that provide solutions to our everyday challenges into full income generating businesses.
All students around the world can take part in ENACTUS activities by just forming or joining the club on their campuses. When it is time for a business challenge competition they can sign their club up and participate with any good project they have.
A good number (if not most ) of the tertiary institutions in Ghana are active members of ENACTUS.
Competitions
Aside the annual ENACTUS National competition, there are also several other avenues where students can take their business ideas(projects) and pitch for sponsorships and investments.
Opportunity Desk is one of many online platforms that provide information on grants, pitches, and many different opportunities for students and non students to showcase their businesses for investments and sponsorship opportunities.
The ENACTUS National competition is sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank, ABSA Bank, KPMG, and Ford Motors(to the best of my knowledge). There is the need to mention these companies because the winners of the competition get awarded by some of them. For example Ford gives, in awards, a sum of money and a plaque to the winning teams.
Our team has participated in a number of these entrepreneurship or business idea challenges including the Total energies business competition, the Recycle Up business challenge, and the Presidential Pitch challenge. In all of these challenges our team always makes it among the top performing teams in terms of our project feasibility.
But I’m not here to brush our success in your face rather I’m here to tell you about how we emerged the overall winners of the National Business Challenge competition two consecutive times.
How we prepared for the challenge
The simple answer is dedication, hard work and teamwork. But since you’re not here for the simple answer let’s get into the nitty gritty.
How do you prepare for a competition if you have tried and lost this particular competition six times in a row?
It was almost like we told ourselves we’re not loosing again. I mean, this was definitely in our heads but it seemed like we had sat ourselves down and talked about it. But nay we did no such thing. I’m having goosebumps recalling how we worked through nights seamlessly just perfecting our presentation.
We divided and and conquered, and conquered!
We had our projects on the ground already, developed from past months and/or years. Let me remind you, that’s what we do at ENACTUS; we develop ideas that will provide solutions to our everyday challenges into sustainable businesses. Now that you are on track let’s continue.
As of last year(2021) before we won the competition for the first time, our team had about 7 to 12 active members. By active members I mean those who are willing to come for meetings when there’s one. Of course our team has more members now. We just won the competition for the second consecutive time c’mon!!
I always lose my readers explaining details.
“We divided and and conquered and conquered!”
Remember this?! That’s where we are.
For the number of active members we have, we were able to divide ourselves into groups(teams) of four. Each group having a specific task they perform. There was the research team, the scripting team, the presentation team, and the IT team.
The Research team :- This team was responsible for doing research around our projects and finding any relevant information about the project that we need to include in the presentation script.
The Scripting team :- This team was responsible for writing the script for the presentation. Team members in this team needed to have an in-depth knowledge about our projects (or the particular projects we were working on for the competition). They would also be fed with more information by the research team.
The Presentation team :- As the name suggests this team was responsible for the delivery of the project presentation(in speech) at the competition. They had to commit every single word of the script into memory. We presented two projects and each project had not less than three pages(of A4 sheet, 12pt font size) of scripts.
The IT team :- These are the computer geeks. They put our projects on the screen, in a video form, very appealing. I was part of team. We took footage of our projects on the field and used some license-free footage from the internet to help our presentation send our message.
Because we weren’t many, one person could belong to more than one team. For example at the time of scripting, myself and 
IT team still grinding after 1AM
Our projects
We presented two projects last year(2021). They are WASTE-TEK and SHEAME.
WASTE-TEK
We found out that our country was facing challenges with electronic waste (e-waste) as they keep increasing at a very fast rate while there is no proper e-waste disposal channel. So our project (waste-tek) is to provide a solution to this challenge by recycling some of the electronic waste products.
By doing this we created more jobs for the youth in the production of these incubators, empowered more youth to go into poultry farming(by making the incubators available, accessible, and affordable), this also empowered more farmer to expand their production, solved part of the e-waste disposal challenge.
SHEAME
With our SHEAME project, we process shea nuts(from shea fruits) into shea butter and then use the byproducts which would have polluted the environment and which many shea butter manufacturers dump in our environment to pollute it, to make soles of shoes(mainly) and other useful products.
We presented these two projects for the 2021 competition. And this year(2022) we present two projects also; the WASTE-TEK again and a new project we call VARA-WUDIU.
VARA-WUDIU
“Vara-Wudiu” is a term in the local dialect meaning “feed the cow”. This project helps to mitigate the challenges that result from bushfires during dry season on farmlands, which not only result in loss of properties but also leaves the environment polluted with tonnes of carbon dioxide gases emitted into the atmosphere which in turn pose a danger to our health and destroys the climate, by converting the dry grasses and other bio-waste products into animal feed. This empowers livestock farmers by reducing cost of production in terms of feed and in turn maximizing their scale of production. In this case the remaining cost that would have been used for the feed is used to expand the farm.
Of course I’ve summarized these projects but I’ve made sure to highlight the problem and the solution we offer in each case.
I already feel the post is long enough so I wouldn’t bore your with more grammar.
These are the projects that we sent to the competition and fought(with words and with our presentation) our way to the top above everyone else.
ENACTUS Global Championship - Are we all going?
Our victory at the national level of the competition secured us a position or a stage at the global level to sell our solutions to the world. In essence our team has qualified, by winning the national championship, to participate in the Global ENACTUS business competition which will be held in Puerto Rico 🇵🇷 come October this year. I think it is worth mentioning that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most of us as it would be our first time traveling out of the country, if we could afford the costs involved. Of course only a few members of our team will be sponsored by ENACTUS to travel but there are also some key team members that would not make the list. ENACTUS sponsorship will be given priority to the presentation team members. We in the IT team might have to sit at home and watch our friends on TV.
We all, about/over 20 members would love to go but how do we sponsor this trip? Interesting question.
My school will be handling a portion of the expenses. However, the total travel expense will still be too much for the team to cover on our own for all of us( we’re talking a total of 15 students) and I(and my colleagues) will be more than grateful if the Hive community considers me family enough to support this project. I can only imagine how this will peak the interest of students to join Hive.
If you care to support us:
BTC:
1A3H2pqFBArTYCd8WF9zNEpHyL4tFGcPND
BUSD(SmartChain):
0xf34b76945556f0009b1c4c1522ad7b1c03f35d59
All images used in this blog belongs to the team, we took them with our photographer, some with our phone unless stated otherwise
Gallery
PS: Most of these pictures are from last year’s competition but this is a link to this year’s full presentation on the ENACTUS National stage including our winning announcement.
