The social enterprise empowering young African girls through Education - Ronke Oladele (MSc International Development)

This week we have been following the journey of University of Birmingham Masters student Ronke Oladele who created a social enterprise in 2017. Ronke worked in schools in Nigeria during this time and was shocked to learn about the high drop out rate for girls because their parents could not afford school fees. Anchorise CIC was born and Ronke ran self-esteem and empowerment workshops. The social enterprise also aims to empower girls through the sale of sustainable backpacks. 

Each bag empowers young women through education by paying for fees, organising sanitary pad runs and personal development workshops and summer schools. Our goal is to empower 1000 girls in the next five years. (source: www.anchorise.com)

Creating a learning platform for children - Jack Francis (MSc Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics) and Tom Willetts (MSc Pyschology)

UoB students Jack Francis (MSc Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robots) and Tom Willetts have created an online platform which generates maths questions to help school children learn. We caught up with Jack to find out more about his new company Leaarn.

We provide unlimited custom maths resources for teachers, parents, and tutors, via our question generators. The generators create a worksheet containing questions chosen by the user, which is supplied to them as a PDF. All questions generated are designed from the English National Curriculum for Maths, and we currently cover the entirety of KS1 and KS2, with plans to make question generators for senior schools as well.

Creating a global solution to lockdown - Harry Margolis,(BA Liberal Arts & Sciences)

University of Birmingham's Harry Margolis has created a lockdown travel website with six friends who are also studying at UK universities.

The entrepreneurial team consisting of Harry (University of Birmingham), Jake Blumenow (University of Aston), Mason Edmonds (University of Leeds), Tom Marland (University of Bristol), Thomas Dooley, Theo Conway (both University of York) and Ben Shephard (Nottingham Trent University) came up with the idea in May when they were considering holiday options for the summer.

The idea came about as my friends and I were looking to go away this summer and we spent 20 minutes researching where we could go and what we could do. We knew a lot of people would be in the same position so we decided to make a website.

Lockdown Index is a travel information website which provides border status information in over 200 countries. Additionally the website includes restrictions imposed within each country which we feel will help people to do decide where they can go on holiday.

A snack solution inspired by lockdown - Economics with Spanish students Kieran Fitzgerald and Joshua Barley

Snackcess is the exciting new venture founded by three friends - two of which are UoB Economics students Kieran Fitzgerald and Joshua Barley - the third member is Sonny Drinkwater. Their idea is a snack business aimed at HR managers for their business staff working from home and the concept has been wholly influenced by the lockdown restrictions enforced during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

We came up with the idea when we realised how much workers and students working from home during the lockdown were complaining about the deterioration of their diet and frequent unhealthy snacking. Snacking doesn't have to be unhealthy, there are so many healthy snacks out there to keep workers fuelled when working, while staying health-conscious.

Solving a problem by creating your own product - Samantha Jambawo (BSc Ecomonics)

Samantha Jambawo studies Economics at the University of Birmingham and she has recently started her own skincare business called New Eden.

"New Eden was created from the desire for natural, effective and sustainable skin and hair care products. Drawing on inspiration from around the world, we create unique blends of butters, herbs, oils and other natural ingredients to help people feel confident in their own skin. On top of this, our customers benefit from knowing that our products are ethically sourced, produced and packaged."

Samantha created the business after trying to find skin products to help her own skin condition

Creating yoga accessories from East African kanga fabric - Freya Samuel (BA Modern Languages)

It’s been an exciting few weeks since securing the B-Enterprising Ideas Fund investment for my business Kanga Yoga.

It has been a very quick process from coming up with the idea, to securing the funding, to launching the website and going live.

Kanga Yoga is an eCommerce website selling yoga accessories, including yoga mat bags and yoga mat straps, which I make by hand in the UK from beautiful East African kanga fabric. The business also donates 10% of all sales to a charity based in Nairobi, Kenya, which empowers women through employment - it has been a real pleasure working with them so far. 

UoB alumnus mission to fight plastic pollution in seas - Ben Moody (Seven Clean Seas)

Ben Moody (pictured right) with Tom Peacock-Nazil

Biological Sciences graduate Ben Moody looks back at his year after graduating from the University of Birmingham in 2019. B-Enterprising caught up with Ben to find out about life after graduation and his time spent working in an environmental start-up....

Seven Clean Seas (SCS) is an Ocean Cleanup Organisation based in Singapore, and also operating in Malaysia and Indonesia. The purpose of Seven Clean Seas is to inspire the next generation of environmental activists to take action and save our planet.