**NORTHERN COLLEGE MEDIA RELEASE**

Three Northern College students travelled to Toronto to compete in the 2018 Enactus Canada National Exposition on May 14-16. The three-day event featured teams from 67 Enactus groups representing colleges and universities across the nation. The team participated in the opening round of competition in a league with five other institutions.

As part of the competition presentation, the team highlighted the group’s accomplishments over the past year that are enabling progress through entrepreneurial action. Their community outreach project, Social Thinktank, saw participants work towards developing a sustainable business solution with the potential to solve or alleviate identified social issues within the community, and their business venture, Streets to Suit, aims to provide business solutions to alleviating homelessness through meaningful employment.

“Enactus Canada social entrepreneurship projects are now an integral part of our business curriculum,” said Raj Mohanty, Business Professor at Northern College and faculty advisor of the Enactus team. “It gives excellent exposure to our students in developing partnerships with various community agencies and corporate sector on the Enactus platform to solve social problems that are not only relevant to northern communities but for the world in general.”

The competitive process, along with additional events such as the student leadership executive forum and network social, provided an opportunity for collaboration and best practice sharing with peers and business leaders.

“Being part of Enactus is an opportunity to not only help other people but to learn how to create a business, and no matter what, if it fails, the model is made so we can keep creating and fail without loss,” said Jonathan Lavergne, President of Enactus Northern College. “Going to Nationals provides a chance to see where the other teams are with their projects, how much impact they are actually creating and if we can replicate that with our project.”

As motivation to continue improving their projects, Enactus Northern College has been invited to participate as observers at the Enactus World Cup in San Jose, California, in October 2018.

The members that represented Enactus Northern College at the national expo are Jonathan Lavergne, Business – Marketing student and President of Enactus Northern College, Kevin Murphy, Business General student and Vice-President of Marketing of Enactus Northern College, and Kirandeep Kaur, Business – General student.

The team would like to acknowledge the support from the Northern College Student Association and the Northern College Alumni Association with travel and competition expenses.

Enactus Northern College is open to all students and works hard to develop projects that benefit the community. For those interested in joining the team or becoming a mentor, please contact the College’s Applied Research, Entrepreneurship and Innovation (AREI) department at 705-235-3211 ext. 2172 or innovation@northern.on.ca.

The Enactus Canada National Exposition brings together student, academic and industry leaders from across the country to celebrate the achievements of Canada’s future leaders and entrepreneurs. For more information about Enactus and the National Competition, visit www.enactus.ca.