“OMU Students take 2 nd place at the international social entrepreneurship competition!
The outcome of entrepreneurship education – Turning the great idea into action”
The group of OMU students (MD Safayat Hossain; M.Sc in Environmental Engineering (Bangladesh), Nabeela Maqbool; M.Sc in Soil Science (emiSS), Sümeyye Koç; PhD Candidate at Department of Neuroscience and Merve Aşık; M.Sc in Biology) and the Volunteer from France (Marion Cohadon; funded by French Civil Service Agency), won the 2nd place at the international social entrepreneurship competition on 22-23rd of April 2021, organised by Lithuania Business University of Applied Sciences.
The team presented a well-structured pitch to the judges which included all aspect of the requirements. They also demonstrated a high level of performance not only theoretically but also used all the soft skills / competencies they developed during the preparation period.
This unique international team members are coming from different countries, from various disciplines, who previously participated at entrepreneurial activities and programmes organised by Prof. Dr. Kursat Demiryurek and Hiroko Kawamorita such as “Learning By Doing-Entrepreneurship Training Program in Turkey” project funded by the US embassy, Entrepreneurship Education and entrepreneurial activities funded by DOKAP and TUBITAK, at DOKAP Preincubation Centre located at Faculty of Agriculture.
The team identified the problem of organic waste which cannot be biodegrade within the usual bin. It release greenhouse gases which is detrimental to the environment. Therefore, they proposed the feasible business idea to generate income for social project which was their initial plan for social entrepreneurship project to provide awareness raising activities on environment for school and University students in Samsun. They have also received the guidance from Prof. Dr. Ridvan Kizilkaya who is the expert in this field. Based of this real feedback, they created the feasible activity plan which can be performed in Turkey.
For the competition, the team came up with the innovative idea to develop an organic waste management system by producing the Fertile Bin which can be used to compose the waste within shorter time compare to other competitors in the market.
The main aim of this social business idea is to change people’s habits in terms of recycling and to create the social awareness such as to: produce the fertilizer for farming or gardening at home for financial benefits; profiting Institutions (School, College, University, Startup Companies, etc) financially as institutional benefits; reducing the size of the waste, encouraging zero waste type of behavior for developing zero waste management model.
They are awarded a special prize including 3 month mentorship abroad.
The team will continue with the project idea generation under the mentorship and to create the action plan for the next step.
