Interview with the President of Enactus Southampton

Josh Hasdell answers our questions on the student-run social enterprise Enactus Southampton.

1) What’s Enactus Southampton all about?

Enactus Southampton is a student run social enterprise. We are committed to using innovative solutions to transform lives in both international and local communities. Our team has 203 members from varying disciplines, yet we all share the same passion and drive to create change, clocking up over 30,000 volunteer hours in the last year. We currently run 11 projects, 7 of which are social and 4 are commercial.

2) Why did you first get involved?

I  got involved 4 years ago when I attended their recruitment evening because I had heard about some of the work Enactus (at the time was known as SIFE) were doing in Africa around affordable solar power for the  Right Light project. I  got hooked and headed up Right Light’s Research & Development and helped expand the project from Madagascar to Kenya.

3) What do you all do on a weekly basis?

A whole range of things depending on our role. As we are functioning as a business,  we have an HR department, Corporate Relations, Marketing and Recruitment, as well as an IT and Financial sector, to ensure the smooth running of the entire society. We also have 11 project leaders who run our social and commercial projects, which are at the heart of everything we do.

4) Why should new students get involved?

1 simple reason – because you won’t experience anything else quite like Enactus whilst at University – from learning new skills outside of your degree and making friends for life, to getting real world experiences and making a physical and visible change to someone else’s life. Nothing in my view will ever come close to the feelings and experiences I’ve had alongside my Enactus teammates.

5) What’s your best memory of the society?

I have two. Firstly it was during our recruitment period when over 600 people turned up to hear what Enactus does and then over 300 people asked to join the society. My second, is last April when we were recognised as the leading team in the country in social enterprise at the Enactus national competition, beating  52 other national teams!

6) What’s Enactus’ next big project?

We have a lot of projects coming up, as our mission alongside our partners, is to directly impact over 100,000 people every year starting in 2016. A few that I think are going to be big are our biodiesel project that creates eco fuel from waste chip fat oil, and our nationwide Retirement transition initiative which gives people close to retirement age the advice and opportunity to keep active after they retire.

7) And finally, describe Enactus in 3 words

Passionate – Driven – Fun-loving!