Trinitytoday 34 Trinitytoday 34 Social entrepreneurship, with the aid of technology and ever-growing networks in the government, business and community spheres, is an answer to conceptualising and implementing such changes. The Social Entrepreneurship program at Trinity will be designed to guide students from the ideation stages in conceptualising their own social enterprise, to launching initial pilots and giving them the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of social entrepreneurship experts. The program will be supplemented by an extracurricular course and monthly workshops that will address topics from angel investing to applying for government grants. Entrepreneurship and start-ups are now omnipresent, and are increasingly becoming a choice for graduates. It excites me to see a program, initiated by Trinity, that allows students to apply their entrepreneurial zeal where they can address the challenges we face as a global community. As a pre-eminent education provider in the Asia-Pacific, Trinity is well placed to leverage regional and global trends to position itself as an effective global change-maker. While its Social Entrepreneurship program is very much in its beta stages, I believe it is possible through pertinent collaborations and the identification of relevant mentors for it to play a significant role in equipping young people with the skills to begin reshaping the societies they live in. Alex Horton (TC 2012) is currently running the Social Entrepreneurship program at Trinity. If you are interested in being involved, becoming a mentor or have any questions, please contact hortona@student.unimelb.edu.au Trinity is offering a new program aimed at teaching students the principles of social entrepreneurship, including providing mentors to assist them in creating their own social enterprises. This follows the successful development of a pilot project by students Colin Gifford and William Mullins that addressed mental health awareness by encouraging student participation in sport. The project was undertaken in partnership with US-based Headspace, a company whose mission is ‘to improve the health and happiness of the world’ through mindfulness and meditation training via smart phone apps. The initiative demonstrates student capabilities when given guidance and mentorship to deal with issues they believe need addressing. As the mentor tasked with building Trinity’s Social Entrepreneurship program, I have been given invaluable insight into my own capabilities to effect change. Support from the Trinity community has allowed me to kick-start my career on terms that suit my own values and allow me to maximise my opportunities. As I write this, humanity stands at a turning point. We live in a world where climate change increasingly threatens our long- term existence, a US populist president threatens the escalation of nuclear war in a destabilised Asia-Pacific and humanitarian crises litter the Middle East and South-East Asia. At the same time – as I navigate my path through my early 20s – we live in a world where our ability to effect change is like no other period in human history. For example, rapidly developing technology means that I can contact my friends at the touch of a button from almost anywhere in the world, and learn about practically anything with little more than some smart Googling. Yet the societal ‘systems’ that guide my interaction in this new world belong to the old world. For example, our third largest export is education yet we educate our students with a higher education system out of touch with the opportunities this new world provides. Rather than engaging students and designing educational experiences around student passions and talents, we have become preoccupied with force- feeding students information and knowledge that may not be relevant in achieving their life goals. It is clear to me that young people want to change things for the better. However, they are too soon confronted with the realities of needing to earn a living within outdated structures, and ultimately must adopt mindsets inherited from a past way of life. We need to fundamentally alter the way in which we face global problems, while redesigning our societies to adopt more cost-effective and environmentally friendly systems conducive to learning and change. REIMAGINING OUR SOCIETY THROUGH SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP BY ALEX HORTON (TC 2012) Colin Gifford (back row right) and William Mullins (not pictured) piloting their initial social enterprise at Trinity.