Ice cream project helps DCU team scoop award

A TEAM of students from DCU has beaten off competition from third level colleges around Ireland with some innovative projects designed to solve community challenges.

The Dublin City University (DCU) students were crowned 2017 Enactus Ireland National Champions at Chartered Accountants House and will now be representing Ireland at the Enactus World Cup.

The National Championships saw colleges from 10 higher education institutes (HEIs) across the country compete for the title with projects designed to solve community challenges through entrepreneurial action.

The DCU winning projects included Second Scoop, an ex-prisoner work programme, and Well On The Way, a social enterprise providing business apprenticeships to asylum seekers.

Second Scoop sees a partnership between Ben & Jerry’s and ex-prisoners from Care After Prison provide ice cream for corporate events, festivals and fairs.

A pilot phase was carried out last month to empower an ex-prisoner to serve ice cream to individuals on DCU campus. The team has lined up two corporate events for this month. 

Chairperson of Enactus DCU, Jack Kane, explained the motivation behind Second Scoop.

“Ex-prisoners are individuals too and we want to give them a chance to succeed in life,” he said.

The second project – Well On The Way – sells bottled water and uses all net profit to build wells in Democratic Republic of Congo.

So far, the team have empowered two asylum seekers and have raised over €20,000 in revenue and are set to build their first well over the summer.

A third DCU project, HeadstARTs, provides weekly classes in dance, drama, music and art for people with intellectual disabilities.

Chairperson of Enactus Ireland, Terence O’Rourke, said the organisation was very excited for Enactus DCU to represent Ireland at the Enactus World Cup

“All the student teams involved this year have shown tremendous understanding of how their entrepreneurial skills and talents can be used to bring about real change in their communities,” she added.

The winning DCU team was closely followed by Enactus Trinity College Dublin and the other semi-finalists Enactus Dublin Institute of Technology and Enactus NUI Galway.

Enactus DCU, consists of six team members; Lucy Mangan, Jack Kane, Daniel Kyne, Matthew Hewston, Margaret Hanlon and Christopher Sheerhan.

All will be heading to London in September to represent Ireland at the prestigious Enactus World Cup event.

Founded in November 2011, Enactus Ireland is one of 36 country organisations around the world that operates an Enactus programme.

It brings together student, academic and business leaders who are committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to solve community challenges.