University of British Columbia Students win oikos Award 2007
The third oikos Award for Student Entrepreneurship went to Sprouts, Canada's largest student-run food co-op, a not-for-profit organic grocery store and education centre located at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
Paul Dickinson, CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project and Award Committee member Claude Siegenthaler (Hosei University Tokyo) handed over the Award to Alice Miro, a UBC Student at the oikos Winter School 2007 in Witten/Herdecke, Germany. The Award is accompanied by a prize money of EURO 1000.
The judging committee commented that the winning project demonstrates an integrated action learning approach that combines business education with university change management and social entrepreneurship.
The project has the potential to outgrow with new ventures being added and could spread beyond the university. And it can be replicated at other campuses.
Student teams from eight countries applied for the award. Because of the high quality of entries the jury decided to give two honorary mentions: one for another Canadian entry from University of Guelph students: “The Energy Retrofit Project”. A second honorary mention went to the “Uni-solar” project at the University of Leipzig, Germany.
The Annual oikos Award for Student Entrepreneurship in Higher Education aims to motivate Students to develop projects with measurable impacts on Sustainability and Higher Education.
The 2007 Award Committee was composed of the following representatives from student organisations, NGOs and academic faculty:
Nina Hug, oikos International (Switzerland), Paschen von Flotow, European Business School (Germany), Andrew J. Hoffman, University of Michigan (USA), Tim Lehmann, oikos Witten/Herdecke (Germany), Tony Long, WWF European Office Brussels (Belgium), Claude Patrick Siegenthaler, Hosei University Tokyo (Japan), Marcia Aurora Winslade, California Sustainability Student Coalition (USA) and Matti Spiecker, Stiftung Welt:Klasse (Germany).
JH, 11/2007, DS