Since the humble beginnings of Enactus UK in 2001, every year has been a huge leap forwards for us. This year was no different, but oh my… what a leap!
Here is us taking a look back at 2013:
1. We are always very grateful for the support from our sponsor companies and in 2013 we welcomed the following new companies – Dunnhumby, IHG, Lloyds Banking Group, S C Johnson, SIG and Tesco.
2. The alumni network was very active last year; they continued to grow in 2013 and is now bigger than ever, nearly all of our teams have the support of an alumni mentor, they held a social every month and launched a series of professional development events. They also had 13 alumni represented at World Cup and 2 of the alumni were awarded the title of Enactus UK “Champion” which showed the importance of alumni working at our sponsor companies, congratulations again to Anna Grant and Aimee Clark.
3. Last year Enactus UK hosted the first ever Enactus National Competition (after the rebrand) and with it came a few changes, including the reduced presentation time of 17 minutes and for the first time ever we had 5 final round teams! We were amazed with how well all the teams adapted to these changes. The quality of presentations, the passion and the sheer scale of life changing impact was truly awe inspiring. Southampton were crowned National Champions and Lincoln won the Rookie League.
4. In July we said goodbye to Ranj, a programme manager for two years and much loved member of staff. In her place stepped Abby Price who has brought great energy and ideas into the team. We hope Abby has enjoyed her last half a year as much as we have enjoyed having her as part of the team.
5. The inaugural Summer Action Awards took place at Team Leader Training (TLT) hosted by Unilever, where Nottingham and Essex won ‘Summer Champion’ and ‘Most Improved’ respectively. As a whole programme it was brilliant to see the hard work teams had been putting in over the summer, to make a year round impact. Make sure you are starting to plan your summer action for 2014!
6. We grew to over 50 universities this year, a huge milestone which we are enormously proud of. From September we welcomed the new rookie teams for this year – Coventry, Dundee, Portsmouth, UEA.
7. Enactus Southampton at the Enactus World Cup in Mexico, not only were they the first UK team to make it to the Final Round but also came Runner Up! We also really enjoyed seeing so many teams staying up together watching online. It showed real UK camaraderie and has motivated so many of our teams to do bigger and better things this year.
8. We launched more ITCs and new initiatives than ever this year, giving more teams the chance to receive funding for their teams and projects, these include:
- Centrica’s Sustainability Award
- Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s CRE Award (BRAND NEW)
- EY’s Youth Empowerment Award (BRAND NEW)
- Wilkinson’s Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award
- Unilever’s Made by You Award (BRAND NEW)
- IHG’s work experience opportunity for employability projects (BRAND NEW)
9. Training Weekend at Grantham; we completely restructured the agenda and utilised the professional experience of our alumni to run more sessions than ever before! All of students left motivated and energised to improve their teams and their projects.
10. We announced our new National Competition 2014 venue! With our substantial growth over recent years, we will be moving to the Novotel in Hammersmith which has a much greater capacity and room for more features including an enormous careers fair and a separate ‘Project Fair’.
All in all 2013 was a great year for Enactus UK, and you all made it happen. But you think 2013 was good, just wait 2014 has already begun and we have so many plans…
Happy New Year,
Enactus UK
Enactus UK 