Earlier this month, Walla Walla University’s Enactus club traveled to Tennessee to participate in a business pitch competition hosted by Hyve International, a global community focused on empowering Seventh-day Adventist entrepreneurship and integrating faith with business. 

Eight university student entrepreneurship teams, including one from the Middle East, convened in Tennessee for a weekend of conferences, seminars, networking luncheons, a trade show fair, and the grand finale student pitch competition. The event helped students explore ways to combine Christian values and mission with e-commerce.

WWU’s Enactus club presented two of their projects at the competition. Bionova, the team’s first project, is focused on providing a form of clean, renewable energy to third-world countries. The project targets isolated villages whose only source of energy is propane, which is prohibitively expensive. Bionova’s solution uses animal waste to create energy that can be sold to villages at a very affordable price. Providing a renewable energy source has the potential to help employ more villagers and reduce deforestation. 

WiseBite, Enactus’s newer project, is a health-oriented app that provides a bilingual service for health conscious individuals. A user with dietary restrictions would be able to download the app and use it to scan barcodes of items in a grocery store instead of struggling to read a complicated nutrition label in a second language. The project aims to ensure that healthy eating is cross-culturally accessible. 

The four Enactus team members had three minutes to give their presentations and share their business pitches with a panel of judges and the audience at the competition. After the presentation, judges asked the team questions about their integration of faith in business, plans for scaling, and intended social impact. The Enactus team was awarded third place and earned $2,500 for their projects. 

“The most rewarding part of the trip was meeting so many like-minded people,” said George Perez, senior psychology major and president of the Enactus club. “The environment made us realize that our efforts can go far beyond WWU and make a positive impact in the world.” 

The Walla Walla University Enactus chapter is part of an international organization that connects students and leaders through entrepreneurial-based projects. Learn more about the global reach of Enactus by visiting enactus.org.

Posted March 28, 2024.