Five St. Paul’s GreenHouse ventures received grants to develop their socially minded products and services at the most recent GreenHouse Social Impact Showcase.
Left to right: Tina Chan, Laura Morrison, Zied Etleb, Ashwin Vadivelu, Alexandra Wong. Congratulations!
Every term, the live-in social impact incubator awards promising applicants seed money to develop prototypes or launch their ventures. The awards are presented at the Social Impact Showcase, which includes community members from the social innovation and tech startup community, as well as students, staff, and faculty.
At the April 5 event, Dialogue Xchange, an ‘engaged dialogue’ startup founded by GreenHouse innovator Trishala Pillai, also hosted two panels on celebrating diversity in social entrepreneurship; one of them was facilitated by Elle Crevits, GreenHouse alumna and current social entrepreneur-in-residence.
Congratulations to the Winter 2016 Social Impact Fund recipients:
- Zied Etleb, founder of Curiato, aims to help patients, practitioners, and caretakers better understand bedsores through the creation of a patient information web portal, and will eventually design a smart mattres
- Laura Morrison, founder of GameChanger Sports, will use sports and recreation to recode traditional ideas of masculinity, a context in which many important relationships occur and ideals are adopted.
- Tina Chan’s venture, PASS Kit, aims to assist mental wellbeing and stress for students and employees in the public and private sectors. PASS Kit will develop further as Tina explores a business-to-business sales and fulfillment strategy.
- Ashwin Vadivelu is planning to replicate The Childrens10 Foundation model in at least seven Ontario universities by August 2017, with a goal of raising $16,000 per year for children in Sri Lanka.
- Alexandra Wong, founder of CUE Parties, will help plan birthday parties that encourage youth to think beyond their current consumer mindsets to enact positive social impact as citizens.