Dr Gerhard Heusipp, Head of ZFIT, and Imke Hans from the Career Service of the Faculty of Society and Economics welcomed the visitors before Ulrike Trenz, co-founder and managing director of Impact Hub Ruhr, opened the event with a talk on innovative business approaches and social entrepreneurship. She also led the workshop ‘Solutions for a Better World’: divided into five groups, participants were able to learn about and try out, amongst other things, the Lean Start-up method for innovative start-ups in their early stages. Ulrike Trenz was enthusiastic about her first visit to Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences: “I’m impressed by the international mix of students. It’s also lovely to see just how much interest there is in start-up-related topics.”
Things got particularly interesting during the start-up talk with Antonia Cox from Pottburri. The entrepreneur from Straelen spoke about how she founded her business and her deal with Ralf Dümmel on the TV programme ‘Die Höhle der Löwen’.
The 20 stands at the ‘Sustainability Fair’ offered a deeper insight into the university’s internal projects and start-ups focusing on sustainability. Alongside various projects, student initiatives such as the Fairtrade Group and the AStA of Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences were also present. The houseboat “AnnaSpoy” also took part, running a workshop where participants built bee hotels together.
During the closing networking session, visitors had the chance to chat with students and staff from the university. The enthusiastic response to the “Make an Impact! Day” delighted the organising teams from StartGlocal and the Career Service of the Faculty of Society and Economics: “We hope that the participants were able to take away inspiration and motivation to take the step towards self-employment and make a lasting impact in the region and beyond,” said Dr Gerhard Heusipp.
StartGlocal – Global Spirit for Local Start-ups
The “StartGlocal – Global Spirit for Local Start-ups” project has been funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action since April 2020 as part of the EXIST programme. Sustainability is the project team’s top priority: for every milestone in a project, a tree is to be planted as part of a “StartGlocal Forest”. “The issue of sustainability is of great importance in our StartGlocal project. It is very important to us to establish the university as an innovation partner for sustainability issues in the region, whilst at the same time involving our students and thereby supporting their development,” said Dr Gerhard Heusipp, Head of the Centre for Research, Innovation and Transfer at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences.
