| Global Social Entrepreneurship Summit: Promoting Student Innovators with Unreasonable Vision | |
| Author: Sharon Brown-Peters, American School of Bombay | December 11th, 2013 | |
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Where better than Mumbai, “Maximum City”, to find a student-led initiative called the Global Social Entrepreneurship Summit? The American School of Bombay is an international school that has been recognized as a pioneer of the 1:1 movement. After more than twelve years, technology-enhanced learning is woven into the DNA of the school. As well, the school will host its third technology-focused conference, Un-Plugged. This conference features hands-on sessions, workshops to promote innovative and best practices, classroom visits and showcases of student products and processes. This year, in tandem with the Un-Plugged conference, students and teachers from across the globe are invited to participate in this Summit, a unique event created by Sharon Brown-Peters, Karishma Galani and Julie Lindsay. Social entrepreneurs are described as “innovators with unreasonable vision” to create social change by Karishma Galani, an alumna of ASB (2009) and a recent graduate of Northeastern University. Karishma is now employed by the Research and Development division of ASB. ASB students will act as facilitators and leaders throughout the Summit as they share their expertise in their own social enterprises and global experience. Shiv V. is on such student who has not only participated and competed in Entrepreneurship programmes in Mumbai and the U.S., but who also started his own service learning project at ASB with an entrepreneurial flavour. He and other students who joined his club, “Better Mumbai”, have created innovative solutions at a school-wide level that address environmental concerns. The GSES participants will work in cross-school teams using the Design Thinking framework to create social entrepreneurial solutions - innovations with an unreasonable vision - to address issues of global significance. According to the Henry Ford Learning Institute, Design Thinking is an approach to learning that uses specific techniques and mindsets to develop a student’s creative confidence. Working to identify problems and generate solutions for design challenges allows students to learn to frame their thinking around the mindsets of developing empathy, promoting a bias toward action, encouraging ideation, and working in a culture of prototyping. The Summit participants will visit social enterprises in the vibrant city of Mumbai, where entrepreneurial initiatives flourish and opportunities abound. Coupled with this is the opportunity to learn more about how technology, specifically tools that support community building, collaboration, co-creation, including social media, can be harnessed in bringing people together in support of a solution to an identified problem. Julie Lindsay, well known for her work with the Flat Classroom conferences and global collaborative projects, will also be facilitating with her expertise in connected learning. Read more about Social Entrepreneurship on this blog post by Karishma and find out more about the conference on our webpage. Students who are in middle and high school, as well as teachers and parents, are welcome to register for this exciting venture. For more information, or if you would like to bring students to the Summit, don’t hesitate to contact us. Check out our Facebook Page! |
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