Written by Yuchen Wang, ISI Intern
Congratulations to five teams who were awarded Illinois Social Innovation Mini-Grants in Fall 2020 to support their entrepreneurial social ventures: Monarch, Symmetry, Lotus Creates, IlliniBox and Phoenix.
Monarch strives to empower women by enhancing professional skills to reduce paper waste in the Champaign-Urbana community. Monarch is making paper journals from post-consumer recycled paper. They also work with WIN Recovery to help homeless women develop greater capacity in full time jobs.
Symmetry balances humanity and nature by developing sustainable alternative wood products. These products help to avoid cutting down trees and the process of making the wood can also decrease organic waste that ends up in landfills.
Lotus Creates seeks to empower at-risk minority youth by offering art as an outlet for their creative expression. They aim to facilitate college students mentoring with high school students to improve their academics and help them to choose preferred artistic medium for creative expression.
Illini Box is a sustainable to-go container platform. This student venture provides food service providers with reusable containers instead of single-use disposables. With this venture, they aim to reduce waste and cost, while making customers happier.
Phoenix tries to address a lack of funding for creative subjects in Champaign-Urbana high schools with a focus on visual arts. The end goal of this venture is to establish a nonprofit social purpose organization to promote sustainability and to encourage students’ artistic passions.
Illinois Social Innovation Mini-Grants is a program that provides funding to seed the development of student-run social ventures. Eligible teams can receive up to $500 to support their social venture ideas. If you are interested in this, please contact Valeri Werpetinski werpetin@illinois.edu.