November 2019

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 12, 2019—It’s not often that 20-year-old undergraduate students are asked their opinions about how to expand or improve a business located 10,000 miles away.

But for more than a dozen Santa Clara University students each year, that’s precisely their mandate. Through a rigorous award-winning fellowship program—the Global Social Benefit Fellowship (GSBF)—they are trained to provide consultant-level research and advice to socially minded businesses around the globe that are combating poverty by addressing issues like water scarcity, lack of electricity, toxic fuel, or unemployment.

On Nov. 18, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Locatelli Student Activity Center on Santa Clara’s campus, this year’s 18 fellows from Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship will describe their research and success stories from their work in places like Uganda, Rwanda, and Bangalore, India. Media are invited to attend. To set up interviews in advance, please contact Deborah Lohse of SCU Media Communications.

GSBF (which has turned out 10 Fulbright Scholars, three valedictorians, and one Rhodes Scholar finalist) is one of the University’s most successful and rigorous fellowship programs. It spans ten months—most of it preparing the Fellows to spend eight weeks over one summer traveling to far-flung countries to provide advanced “action research” to social entrepreneurs. The businesses use the students’ work to accomplish their poverty-fighting goals faster and more efficiently.

Among the students who will be presenting (all of whom are seniors who conducted their research this past summer) are:

Gavin Cosgrave and Rachel Han will describe their success helping Three Wheels United, a financing company for drivers of electrified tuk tuks (three-wheel bikes) in Bangalore, India, prepare to move into new markets in New Delhi.

Beshoy Eskarous, Griffin Garner, and Emily Petermann will describe digital communication tools they helped create for NUCAFE—which helps coffee growers in Uganda increase their income—to move from hard-to-scale, in-person training services to video training.

Avery James and Lauren Serfas will describe how they helped the Kenyan chicken-farming educational company Eggpreneur partner with Catholic Sisters to recruit more women and empower them with supplies, training, and access to markets to become successful poultry farmers.

Andrea Feltz and Faolan Sugarman-Lash will describe market research conducted to help All Across Africa, which which facilitates sale and production of artisanal works in Africa, maximize its recent expansion into Bolgatanga, Ghana.

Alejandra Deambrosio and Quinn Gonzales will decribe a plan to help KadAfrica better communicate its impact model for passion-fruit farming and women-empowerment in Uganda to funders and participants.

Richie Garger and Skyler Kriese will describe a “scaling toolkit” developed for Kenya-based LivelyHoods to expand its training and job-opportunity model for women and youth to other domestic and international locations.

Amanda Eason and Emma Hokoda will describe a strategy manual created for Tanzania-based Solar Sister to improve effectiveness of its door-to-door sales of solar products, better partner with NGOs and religious groups, and recruit more women entrepreneurs and increase impact in difficult-to-reach communities.

Emily Fagundes and Nicholas Fazio will describe research and business-plan advice for PICO-Rwanda to help it foster Rwandan grass-roots businesses more rapidly and with increased financial support.

Avery Rissling will describe a methodology evaluation and program recommendations for Innovation Works, a partner with Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship to create an ecosystem of social entrepreneurship in Baltimore.

For a full list of presenting Fellows and to RSVP for the event, please see the registration site. 

About Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship
Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, located at Santa Clara University, has accelerated more than 1000 social enterprises since 2003. These collectively have improved, transformed, or saved the lives of over 400 million people in 100 countries. We help transform social ministries to more sustainable social enterprise models. We engage Santa Clara University students in research that helps social enterprises, leveraging our location in the heart of Silicon Valley and our Jesuit ambition to end poverty and protect the planet.

Media Contact
Deborah Lohse | SCU Media Relations | dlohse@scu.edu | 408-554-5121