Six students have been selected to go to Kithoka, Kenya in June as part of a three-week start-up entrepreneurship program sponsored by MPowered.
The Kenya trip is one of 10 projects directed by MPowered, a student organization that fosters student entrepreneurship. The group works through MichiKen, a local non-profit, to facilitate the project on the ground.
Kenya Project Director Lucy Zhao, a Business and LSA sophomore, said the project promotes University students to become entrepreneurs by providing hands-on business experience they wouldn’t usually receive in a classroom.
Zhao said the main goals of the project are to provide social entrepreneurship opportunities for the University students and assist Kenyan students develop their own businesses.
“Traditional entrepreneurship would put profit as the ultimate goal, and you have to earn as much money as possible,” Zhao said. “(With social entrepreneurship) they measure how many lives I’ve changed.”
Zhao initiated the project last year with the help of Medical School Prof. Daniel Clauw.
“I felt like we were missing reaching out to a huge part of the University of Michigan population,” Zhao said.
Clauw said in an interview that other components of the trip include participating in clinical research, administering health surveys and teaching in local schools.
In the second launch of the program this year, Zhao said MPowered has added a two-hour weekly preparation course where students will learn entrepreneurial skills this semester, the Swahili language and Kenyan culture.
“This year we’re adding an entrepreneurship-through-camp kind of idea plus cultural exposure, so in this semester the team and I are going to be meeting with entrepreneurship professors, entrepreneurs, we’re going to take Swahili lessons — just getting more prepared,” Zhao said.
Last year MPowered raised $3,500 through grants, scholarships and support from alumni, which served the five participants for two weeks in Kenya, according to Zhao.
The six students selected to go to Kenya come from many schools within the University. Business and Architecture sophomore Carolyn Phillip said she decided to apply for the trip because it provides a unique way of giving back to the visiting community.
Phillip plans to launch her aquaponics business that uses fish to purify water, which then cultivates plants and vegetables.
“I’m really excited. It’s a little overwhelming because it’s the first time I’ve done anything like this.”