Each Summer, the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design conducts the [IN]CITY program to provide non-planning students with introductory skills in urban planning and policy methods, including data collection/analysis, physical planning, mapping and visual representation. Students are introduced to land use policies and urban development processes and develop critical thinking, observation, and analysis regarding an understanding of cities.  On August 12, 2015, for the second year, IEE Executive Director Ed Church was invited to critique the studio presentations.

The Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) empowers the next generation of social entrepreneurs by providing them with mentoring, exposure, and over $80,000 in prizes to transform their ideas into ventures that address the world’s most pressing challenges. Teams from across the globe learn how to design scalable models through a process that emphasizes stakeholder discovery, business innovation, and social impact assessment.  IEE Executive Director Ed Church, previously a Mentor for the Competition, this year served as a Judge in the Regional round, held at the UC Berkeley Haas Business School on February 24, 2017.

The Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seattle was the site of the celebration for the University of Washington’s Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition. Members of the RecoPlastic team, mentored by IEE’s Ed Church, were feted along with other finalists. The team of graduate students from MIT has developed a more environmentally-friendly and socially beneficial way to recycle plastic, in Lagos, Nigeria. Following the ceremony, two of the team members went back to Cambridge, MA for classes, and the third sped off to Lagos to set up operations.

This spring, IEE Executive Director Ed Church served as a Mentor for the Global Social Venture Competition at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, mentoring a Team from the India School of Business via email and Skype. GSVC is a student-run competition to launch the next generation of social enterprise entrepreneurs. GSVC provides aspiring entrepreneurs with mentoring, exposure, and $50,000 in prizes to transform their ideas into businesses with real-world impact. This unique competition connects promising social enterprises to the social impact investment community. Through eight regional partners and six outreach partners, GSVC attracts a diverse group of entrants from around the world.

BASES, the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students, annually sponsors the Social Entrepreneurship Challenge, which awards a total of $50,000 to teams with exceptional business models that generate positive social impact. In addition, teams receive mentoring from experts in social-impact funding, legal issues, and social entrepreneurship. For the third year, in 2016, IEE Executive Director Ed  Church was a judge for the Challenge. Judges included venture capitalists, start-up experts and nonprofit leaders.