An intentional living community where homeless youth in New Orleans have a safe place to live, learn and work.

A community gardening project that aims to alleviate the mental health burden and malnutrition of shelter populations.

A smartphone photography program that offers New Orleans youth a safe space to articulate difficult emotions through creative self expression, thereby improving mental health, self esteem and healthy communication skills.

The ideas above are just three of fourteen unique social ventures pitched at the Taylor Student Showcase, a culminating night for students graduating from Taylor’s Changemaker Institute (CI) social venture accelerator. As part of the Showcase, Taylor also awarded $32,705 in funding to 35 Tulane undergraduate and graduate students via the Changemaker Catalyst Award (funding to engage in diverse experiential learning opportunities), The Alvarez Spark Innovation Award (funding to prototype or test innovative ideas), and the NewDay Challenge (seed funding to launch social ventures).

Live pitches from CI graduates (ranging from freshman to a PhD student) at the Showcase spanned fields of education reform, food justice, charitable efficacy, urban sustainability, healthcare, and cultural and creative exchange. Students shared their learning and growth throughout CI, a social venture accelerator that equips students with the entrepreneurial skills to hone their social venture ideas and develop a roadmap to transform their ideas into an ethical, sustainable, scalable solutions.

A unique accelerator program, CI focuses not only on launching successful ventures, but on equipping students with the tools to more deeply understand the challenges they are addressing and become more aware of local partners, champions, and allies tackling those same challenges, thereby developing community partnerships and building “intrapreneurial” capacity while honestly assessing if their venture is needed or wanted by the community, or already exists in another form. CI thereby measures it success not only in launching successful ventures, but also in the journey of learning, failing, iterating, and joining forces with other local change agents.

During the pitches, audience members were encouraged to provide feedback on stick notes that were later hung up large “Feedback Capture Grids” on the walls, one per venture, with four quadrants representing elements one liked or found notable, constructive criticism, questions, and ideas moving forward.

Tulane is honored as an Ashoka U “Changemaker Campus,” and as CI graduates completed their pitches and 35 students spanning multiple disciplines and schools received their awards, the full stage of student changemakers was a powerful reminder of how Tulane students’ collective energy, passion and drive is creating positive change on our campus and in our local and global community.

Click here to see more photos from the event.

2015/2016 Award Recipients