OSUN and RebelBase Tackle Global Challenges, Globally
Partnership Enters Second Year of Developing Entrepreneurs Across Continents November 5, 2021
OSUN is changing the way entrepreneurship is being taught across the world in conjunction with RebelBase, the project-based entrepreneurship platform. They recently kicked off their second year, expanded version of their Social Entrepreneurship Practicum. This program connects teams of students in different geographies, such as Kenya, New York, Bangladesh, and Kyrgyzstan (to name a few). In just the first few weeks, the impact and learnings from the class have been profound.
This global collaboration is fostering multicultural interactions that can be a game changer in terms of addressing global issues and building business models to find real solutions. Within the first year of the program students are taking their ideas, creating businesses on the ground and making positive differences in their communities.
Co-instructor Eliza Edge at Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley noted, “It’s humbling to be teaching this course. Unlike other entrepreneurship courses, where the role of instructor is to lecture on business topics, we are empowered to capture the true moments of learning that happen when students share the problems they are experiencing in their geographies. One student in Palestine is working on how to build a community of best practices where 70% of girls in surrounding villages are married before 18. Through collaboration with fellow students from around the world, she’s gaining a global perspective on the problem and possible solutions.”
Students who participated in the first year of the OSUN program are now launching their own businesses based on the plans they created via the RebelBase platform. For example, Ahmad Hijjawi in Palestine won a local entrepreneurship contest and soon will be competing in Qatar with 15 different businesses in one of the biggest contests in the Middle East. Hijjawi had no previous knowledge on how to build a project or a business plan before the OSUN course.
As Ahmad summed it up, “The social entrepreneurship course (with OSUN and RebelBase) was the main thing to motivate me to apply for this contest and compete. The soft skills I learned in the class and the fishbowl sessions played a main role in improving my pitching skills.”
The global co-instructors of this OSUN course have emphasized the uniqueness, importance and global appeal. “Across our regions, this could create an incredible interdependence among students, faculty, partners, and alumni,” said the instructor in Palestine, Dalia Najjar. “When sharing a project, we bond in a whole different way. I feel closer to my students than I do to my neighbors across the street, because we’ve worked to build something together. If there’s anything that gives me hope, it’s that we could give people a global platform and community for building big things together.”
For more information about RebelBase or OSUN, please visit https://rebelbase.co/.
Tags:
