The Empower Program for Social Entrepreneurship educates, mentors, guides and motivates aspiring social entrepreneurs. Empower is a program for Tufts University undergraduate and graduate students to engage in practical, experiential learning for social entrepreneurship.
The program also sponsors events, lectures and workshops that promote and shape discourse on social entrepreneurship. Through our alumni network we aim at forming a mentorship system for the advancement of aspiring social entrepreneurs at Tufts.
Empower helps students develop the attitudes, skills and knowledge necessary to pursue entrepreneurial ventures with a social perspective — with a particular focus on poverty alleviation.
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Deadline: March 28, 2013
The Empower Fellowship provides the opportunity for students to launch social enterprises, participate in internships and conduct applied research related to social entrepreneurship in international or local community development. The fellowship offers either a grant or stipend for students to pursue these opportunities and allows students to join the Social Entrepreneurship Network at Tufts, which encourages collaboration, mentorship, and the promotion of social entrepreneurship on campus.
The Empower program offers three types of fellows:
Empower Fellowship — Social Entrepreneurship Grant
The Empower Program will fund individuals who want to become social entrepreneurs, start their own social enterprise or continue working on their social ventures. Social entrepreneurial initiatives and social enterprises are organisations that use market and business mechanisms to achieve social goals. Empower does not give out seed capital for such ventures. Although not exclusive, examples of what Empower is willing to fund include travel, accommodation and board costs for students developing ventures.
Empower Fellowship — Internships
Empower funds and places students in internship positions with social entrepreneurs and social enterprises all over the world. All grants go towards individual cover of expenses such as airfare, housing and transportation for internships outside the Great Boston area over the Summer and Winter breaks.
There are three kinds of internships eligible for an Empower Fellowship:
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Partner Organisation Internships: Empower has established partnerships with several social enterprises around the globe in which we place students directly in internship positions. The list of partner organisations can be found here. Students applying to this type of fellowship are applying directly for both placement and funding (application deadline: March 1, 2013).
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Schwab Foundation Network Internships: The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship is a complementary foundation to the World Economic Forum. The Foundation was created with the purpose to promote entrepreneurial solutions and social commitment with a clear impact at the grassroots level. Through the partnership with Empower, the Schwab Foundation has agreed to give preferential treatment to Tufts students to obtain internships with organisations in their network. Applicants may find Schwab fellows with whom to work here (application deadline: March 1, 2013).
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Like-Minded Organisation Internships: Empower will fund unpaid internships with peer organisations that are in line with the principles of the Empower Program. Students are required to apply to the internship position independently. Once accepted, they are eligible to apply for the Fellowship (application deadline: March 28, 2013).
Empower Fellowship — Applied Research
To obtain the Fellowship for applied research, applicants must be prepared to demonstrate that their project is a market analysis, impact assessment or evaluation for program development of a social venture. Applicants are required to work with/for a host organisation and must have a letter of affiliation stating that their work is needed for any of the above. It is imperative to have a tangible deliverable at the end of the research period, preferably a report to the organisation. The deliverable cannot be limited a thesis, though applicants are encouraged to use the data from the project for their thesis.
