NCC Enactus is a faculty-student-partner collaboration that focuses on direct trade, relationship-based social enterprises. The largest initiative is their relationship selling with their Guatemalan partners including coffee, chocolates, and artisan products. 

​

At the heart of North Central College’s purpose, is growing the cycle of mutual empowerment. 

 

What is the cycle of mutual empowerment? 

 

The idea of the cycle of mutual empowerment came out of the need to break the traditional cycle of poverty where people can’t ever create a sustainable living. To make the cycle of mutual empowerment work, it takes everyone involved including  the students, their partners, and their customers. All involved benefit from the relationship:

• Students gain skills and develop as individuals through a one-of-a-kind hands-on learning environment

• Partners are able to apply their trade and business skills in a sustainable manner

• Customers are able to receive high quality products that support a more socially responsible marketplace

​

The Enactus Team is made up of students from a variety of academic disciplines, but all with a common thread of wanting to create change for a better tomorrow. 

​

Students run the day to day operations with oversight from their advisors. This includes everything from designing product labels to packaging coffee to holding tastings across campus. In addition, students collaborate with other departments across campus on new innovative initiatives such as the viability of utilizing coffee grounds for water filtration and engineering a vacuum pump device to remove the physical limitations from the roaster’s job.

 

The impact on the students is long-lasting. They leave with not only new and expanded skills and increased passion for making a difference, but a better understanding of how to be a socially responsible leader. Students have gone on to start their own social enterprises, serve in the Peace Corps, and be leaders in their corporate community.

​

Whether here in the US or abroad, their partners are entrepreneurs with a desire, drive, and passion for making a decent and meaningful livelihood whether that be as coffee farmers or artisans in Guatemala or realtors or musicians here in Illinois. Their partners also share the same goal of wanting to create change for a better tomorrow.

We are honored to work with the NCC Enactus students and faculty. This blend is a way to support the opportunity for students to continue to travel and meet with their Guatemalan partners. Hear what NCC Enactus alumnus Emily has to say about the impact this experience had on her.