| Pro Humanitate Social Enterprise at Wake Forest |
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The motto of Wake Forest University is Pro Humanitate. Many students choose to attend Wake Forest because of the opportunity to get involved in volunteer work that benefits other people, and in fact the largest student organization on campus is the Volunteer Service Corps which has pro humanitate as its mission. A major focus of entrepreneurship teaching, research and practice is in the area of social entrepreneurship. Social enterprise takes on two forms. Some new ventures, though organized as for-profit ventures, have social welfare as the focus of their efforts. Other new ventures are organized as not-for-profits, having similar types of social welfare goals but operating with different "business" models. Social enterprise is active on the Wake Forest campus. Project Bokonon, a not-for-profit enterprise, was formed in 2002 and works to provide medical supplies to Benin, West Africa. Organized by student Rosita Najmi and advised by Dr. Sylvain Boko (Economics department), Project Bokonon has an active student management team, a board of directors, and is looking to expand to other campuses. See the Student Entrepreneurs and Alumni Entrepreneurs section of this website for more information about Project Bokonon, Backpacks Abroad, and other social enterprise projects. In addition, the Babcock Graduate School of Management hosts a national case-writing competition each year that includes awards for the best social enterprise cases. These cases can be used subsequently in the classroom as instructional tools to enhance teaching about social enterprise. The University Center for Entrepreneurship actively supports social enterprise efforts. A committee of students is working to assemble resources to support social enterprise projects on campus. These will include a library of reading materials, examples of previous work done to start up not-for-profit enterprises, hosting guest speakers, and identifying faculty around campus interested in teaching about social enterprise and not-for-profits. The Pro Humanitate Committee of the Center is organized by Hillary Francis, who may be contacted This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it The Center will seek to support qualified social enterprise ideas as key projects. Click here for more information on How to Get Involved and about how to qualify ideas as formal projects. |