Laura and Hassan attended a one week Summer School in Germany which focused on
Social Entrepreneurship. This summer school is in no way linked to their degrees in Lancaster.
The Summer School was fully sponsored by Vodafone,
Germany. Students from
nine universities across Europe took part in this summer school which
comprised of several lectures and workshops on Social Entrepreneurship. These
encouraged students to identify a problem in their society, find a
non-profitable solution for it and run the enterprise for a few weeks. A
maximum seed capital of 16 Euros was provided to each team.
 | Noble Peace Prize Laureate, Dr Muhammad Yunus has the patronage of this initiative in Germany and his representative Hans
Reitz was present on his behalf. The success story of how Grameen Bank and Grameen Phone have helped to fight poverty
in Bangladesh was very impressive for students. Getting to know how Muhammad Yunus started off with lending a mere $27
to some villagers who were 100% illiterate and how this non-profit lending instituition has now turned into 'Grameen Bank'
and the fact that 100% of the second generation of Grameen borrowers is literate was truly something amazing to know. |
This story provided us
with the inspiration to launch our own project with the aim of increasing knowledge
of children in our local communities and achieve maximum impact in this limited
timescale.