Enactus Memorial earned its 18th regional title in eight years with wins in three categories at the regional championships in Halifax, N.S., recently.

The team of undergraduate students from Memorial will now represent Atlantic Canada at the Enactus Canada National Exposition, May 2-4 in Toronto, Ont.

“This was a year of change for our team,” said Emily Bland, president, Enactus Memorial. “We launched three new projects and the majority of our core members are brand new. This happens every couple of years [and] we are thankful for it this year. It has brought numerous excited and dedicated volunteers with some incredible ideas.”

Tops in three categories

The group competed in four topic competitions, winning the Capital One Financial Education Challenge, the Scotiabank Eco-living Green Challenge and the TD Entrepreneurship Challenge. Memorial was runner-up in a new category focused on youth empowerment.

For each challenge, post-secondary teams from across Atlantic Canada gave presentations about the impact of their community development projects to a judging panel of industry professionals and business leaders.

“I’ve never been more proud of the team.” — Emily Bland

Enactus Memorial focused much of its presentations on Project SucSeed, a new project launched in December for which the team developed a hydroponic system to help address food quality and security concerns in Newfoundland and Labrador.

“I’ve never been more proud of the team,” said Ms. Bland, a third-year commerce student. “With the launch of SucSeed, it was incredible to get so much positive feedback from not only the judges but our peers.

“[Our] strategy going into regionals was to treat it like a test run for nationals. With such a new team, we pushed members to change it up and that is what they did.”

Change-makers

Enactus Memorial is one of the most successful Enactus teams in the country, having won the national title seven times and the World Cup in 2008.

Enactus is a student-run volunteer group, part of an international non-profit organization that mobilizes university and college students to develop outreach projects that improve the quality of life and standard of living of people in need through the application of business processes and models.

The Memorial team currently involves 82 undergraduate students from the faculties of arts, business, science and engineering. Together, they run 13 community projects.