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Social Innovation Initiative in 2017

Seasoned and emerging social innovators secured high-value mentoring and seed funding to scope, implement, and sustain projects around the world in 2017. Entrepreneurship Coordinator and Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Organizations and Society (EOS), Rick Feldman, helped students advance project ideas through EOS courses and personalized mentoring. Students proposing projects from the Dominican Republic to Zimbabwe were awarded competitive seed funding, including:

  • Angelica Mercado ’19 and her non-profit effort, Educacion Sin Limites
  • Sara Harda ’19, president and co-founder of e-nitiate coding camp in Morocco
  • Carly Forcade ’17, creator of Travel Unicorn connecting LGBTQ+ travelers to safe destinations; and Simosenkosi  

A call for 2018 seed funding proposals will be released in coming weeks.

Building from our experience with CGI U, Mount Holyoke is determined to develop our own innovation ecosystem – tapping into the significant expertise of our alumnae, our expanding curricular resources, the Makerspace, and related efforts. A key milestone on our path will be an inaugural social innovation conference at Mount Holyoke: Global-Local Inequalities: Social Change for Sustainable Communities (February 16-17, 2018).