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Brown Entrepreneurship Program awards Emma Clippinger ’09 its Top Prizes Emma Clippinger (emma.clippinger@gmail.com) won top prizes in the Brown Entrepreneurship Program annual Business Plan Competition for her community gardens initiative in Rwanda, Gardens for Health (www.gardensforhealth.org). The Brown University Entrepreneurship Program (EP) (www.brownep.org) awards $50,000 for the best business plans in its annual competition with nearly $30,000 in cash and in−kind services going to the top finisher. In addition, The Swearer Center for Public Service with support from the Goldman Sachs Foundation partnered with EP to provide an additional $5,000 in seed money for the best social entrepreneurship entry. Clippinger won top prize in both categories, netting over $35,000 for her organization. GHI aims to provide a sustainable means of nutritional support and economic empowerment to HIV−positive individuals by establishing a network of community gardens in Rwanda. The gardens are cultivated by people living with HIV/AIDS, supplementing their nutritional needs and empowering them with a source of income. GHI is particularly innovative not only because it targets the vital link between malnutrition and HIV/AIDS, but also because it does so in a sustainable way. GHI’s program includes agricultural cooperatives for vegetable and fruit production; Education and training in sustainable agriculture and nutrition; and income generation through crop and seed sale. Emma is currently in Rwanda as part of her Starr Fellowship award supporting her work to measure the outcomes from the first crop cycles and recalibrate the model to improve crop yields and financial sustainability. Clippinger’s work with GHI was recently featured in this recent Washington Post cover story about the successes of young graduates and challenges in campus recruiting. Read more here. Brown’s Entrepreneurship Program (www.brownep.org) was founded in 1998 to provide students with an enriching entrepreneurial education and nurture the entrepreneurial spirit already alive at Brown, by harnessing the expertise of our alumni and faculty communities. EP is a student−run organization that acts as the extra−curricular side to entrepreneurial learning. EP provides students with lectures and panels from some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country, access to our database of 900 entrepreneurs, one−on−one mentors, software for creating business plans, and Elevator Pitch and Business Plan Competitions for students interested in making their idea become reality. This year, EP partnered with the Swearer Center’s Social Entrepreneurship Program to attract more social entrepreneurship entrants and provide clear guidance to the entrants and judges about valid criteria to evaluate social entrepreneurship proposals to ensure they could compete on an even footing with traditional, commercial entrepreneurship competitors. These efforts were extremely successful with half of this year’s entrants identifying as social entrepreneurs and three of the five contest finalist being social entrepreneurship entrants. |
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