"Expedition Welt" at the University of Witten/Herdecke
The second oikos Award for Student Entrepreneurship went to the University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany for the Project "Expedition Welt".
During an eight month expedition around the globe, three Students visited developing countries (LICs + MICs) and searched in a field survey after sustainable best practice initiatives founded by social entrepreneurs.
During their expedition they reported life into classrooms.
In 40 qualitative semi-structured interviews with the social entrepreneurs recorded by 45 hours of digital video, motivation archetypes were discovered.
The project visits were documented online in 40 published reports (approx. 400 pages), including parts of the biography of the visited Social Entrepreneurs, the key elements of the social business model and detailed descriptions of the project site visits. All project visits were documented in more than 10.000 photos, mostly published online and recorded by 18 hours of digital video. The collected data, including 60 online published diaries, was the basis for a book dedicated to give practical advice to German pupils and students to start own academic expeditions or social initiatives.
Furthermore, the three Students created a Foundation (Stiftung Welt:Klasse) in order to enable young people first hand experiences in third world countries.
Project representative Tim Lehmann received the oikos award during a special award ceremony at the oikos Winter School on November 09, 2006.
The award included a prize money of EURO 1000.-, an invitation to the 6 days long oikos Winter School and a certificate of achievement.
Tim Lehmann also accepted the oikos invitation to be a member of the 2007 award judging committee.
The annual competition will be relaunched and oikos looks forward to receiving the 2007 student contributions.
For additional Information on the oikos award for Student Entrepreneurship and the oikos Winter School please consult the oikos Winter School online documentation.
Contact: Dr. Jost Hamschmidt