Southampton team wins Enactus World Cup

A team of Southampton students has won the Enactus World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The competition, which brings together over 3500 University students from across the world to South Africa to present concepts for business innovation with real world social impact.

The winning enterprise, SanEco, is “aiming to tackle sanitation and flushing poverty through innovative sanitary solutions”, and is currently established in Kenya, with ambitions to spread across the developing world.

Becca Rodney, SanEco’s Project Leader, told the Soton Tab “I really couldn’t have guessed [we would win], every team had such incredible projects that we were just pleased every time we got further!”

“Winning feels incredible. Words cannot describe how amazing the team feel right now”

The Enactus Southampton presentation also included the project Right Light, which aims to “eradicate the use of kerosene as a source of lighting in east Africa and replace it with solar powered solutions”.

Project Leader Andreas Ostrovsky told the Soton Tab “I did not come with any expectations at all to the World Cup! The standard of the presentations is so high and there are some really amazing projects out there creating real impact.”

“So naturally it felt surreal when we were announced winners. The emotions you feel in that instant are very hard to describe.”

“But especially a huge feeling of pride for the whole team and for all the hard work we do throughout the year. This will only make us work harder to further the scope of our impact beyond expectations.”

The team reached the final four after winning through two rounds, beating out Malaysian, Tunisian and Puerto Rican teams.

Alvin Rohrs, President and CEO of Enactus said “Enactus World Cup is truly a world-class show of excellence in entrepreneurial action from students around the world that have a head for business and a heart for the world.”

“Students share their impact projects and gain wisdom from cross-generational learning opportunities. Executives come to be inspired by the leaders of the future and to collaborate with fellow action leaders.”