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First week

After a long ride in one of the typical “my love “ minibuses, we arrived after dark in Maxixe, the economic capital of Inhambane. Waking up the following morning we realised that we had nothing in our fridge. So we decided to go to the supermarket, but soon discovered that this is not the place to get your fresh produce. One needs to head to the busy and crowded Tsula market, an open hall, where the so called market mama’s of Maxixe sell their goods.

Maxixe Tsula Market

The next day we where looking forward to meeting the students of the Univercidade Pedagogica da Maxixe (UP Maxixe) and getting detailed information about the local faced challenges, which the YEEES  Sustainability Camp is trying to address. One of the issues that the UP Maxixe had discovered was directly linked to the experience we had at the market. Looking at the market mamas we already saw that they are working in a highly competitive environment, since the selling activities are already expanded to the streets of Maxixe.

Market mamas selling in on the street

This caught our interest in working on this challenge. In order to receive an insight view on the topic, we decided to interview the market mamas with the aid of our mozambican groupmembers Munira and Edmilson. The interviews revealed that the problems the market mamas face are far more complex than initially thought. Many of the market mamas earn less then ⅓ of the minimum wage in Mozambique. With these earnings, they have to support their families resulting in no money  for business growth or savings. The lack of financial literacy is a major challenge in this environment. They manage their business from day to day. Within the next few weeks our goal is to find solutions to ensure sustainable financial stability for the market mamas.

The research Group: Franziska, Fenja, Edmilson,Munira, Leigh-Ann

YEEES SUSTAINABILITY CAMP

After connecting three different seminars (see YEEES Training Center for more information) Master as well as Bachelor students from different areas of study were able to attend a two week excursion through Namibia in march 2018 experiencing geographical, cultural and (social) entrepreneurial specifics. In two groups of 20 they started in Windhoek and did a round trip including several places like the Namib Desert, Swakopmund and the Etosha national park. The groups have also met students and (social) entrepreneurs from Namibia. A YEEES workshop focusing on sustainability entrepreneurship in the areas visited was designed for analyzing existing entrepreneurial approaches and future entrepreneurial potential. The international and interdisciplinary exchange led to fruitful discussions and the development of several topics for future seminars and master theses.

During the YEEES Idea Jam, the team of the department of Very Large Business Applications of the University of Oldenburg gave an introduction to students of the seminar on “how to create their own website”.

„Workshop: “How to create your own website for your social entrepreneurship ICT Solution”“ weiterlesen

For the first time there will be a track on sustainability entrepreneurship at the BUIS Tage, 20. Tagung der Fachgruppe Betriebliche Umweltinformationssysteme (BUIS) in der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., an established conference on environmental informatics. This time’s focus will be on „Smart Citites / Regions – Technische, wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Innovationen“, while the sustainability entrepreneurship track fosters research on the connection of sustainability and ICT, which is still scarce, though implies huge potential. For more information see the Call for Papers and the BUIS Tage webpage.

YEEES related topics are specifically welcome! Full papers, short papers and abstracts can be handed in by 1rst of March 2018. In case of acceptation of a paper in this track, authors from African partner universities can apply for YEEES traveling funds.

In today’s lecture “Connecting Science, Responsibility and Society Dr. Brenda Scholz, Head of Department of Computing Science at the Nelson Mandela University gave a super interesting talk on the importance of ICT in society and how ICT based innovations can contribute to sustainable socioecological change. Thanks, Brenda, for sharing your experience, providing impressive examples and bringing a South African perspective in! So good to have you here!

Phillip Becher visits the NMU in order to further develop YEEES topics. As a representative of the German YEEES team Phillip will attend several meetings and workshops at the NMU and will get the chance to be part of the HEDIS summer school. He aims at identifying current areas of interest in research and teaching with a certain focus on energy, water and mobility.

As a student at the RWTH Aachen doing his Masters of Science in Transport engineering and Mobility specialized in Infrastructure and Vehicles, Phillip especially brings in his competencies in the field of interdisciplinary work related to mobility topics.

Two papers with first results from YEEES research groups got accepted for presentation at the G-Forum, 21. Interdisziplinäre Jahreskonferenz zu Entrepreneurship, Innovation und Mittelstand, in Wuppertal. Under the overall topic of the conference „Sustainable Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Wie werden nachhaltige unternehmerische Aktivitäten in einem regionalen Ökosystem durch Kontextfaktoren unterstützt bzw. behindert?” YEEES members were able to introduce the project to the entrepreneurial community and discuss their research with interested peers. Thanks, FGF, for offering this inspiring annual conference for so many years now and addressing urgent topics like sustainability in the field of entrepreneurship.