DCU team crowned national Enactus Ireland champions 2020

A DCU student team last night won this year’s national Enactus Ireland competition, an annual competition which brings together students, business leaders, academics and alumni to celebrate social enterprise.

The announcement was made at a virtual event on May 28th.

This year’s presenting team was Alethea Williams 1st year DCU Business School, Eoin Treacy 4th year DCU Business School , Suzanne Jackson 1st year DCU Business School, Emily Fulton 1st year DCU Business School, Jack Parkes (SALIS), Kevin Cogan (School of Computing). The team were led during the year by Enactus DCU Chairs, Thomas Bird (DCUBS) and Ruth Lombard (Nursing), with Noel Hatton (DCUBS) as video-editor.

The main projects presented were:

Dyslexie (dyslex.ie) aims to provide customized solutions for people with dyslexia, in a user-friendly way. Users complete an online questionnaire, which identifies the exact modifications that will maximise the user experience. With this data, the software automatically tailors the visual and textual formatting of any web page. Dyslex.ie customises the background colour, line-spacing, and font style and size to enhance users’ reading experience. It also offers syllable-splitting, word-to-image functionality, and paragraph delineation. The result; users’ reading speed and accuracy increases significantly. After rigorous testing and consultation with key dsylexia experts, Dyslex.ie will have its official launch at the end of June, rolling out to schools, corporates, and individuals. The team is finalising the development of our IOS and Android app to make Dyslexie widely accessible, enabling users to persevere and thrive through the challenges of Covid 19 and beyond.

ReNu – a sustainability initiative with a focus on Irish biodiversity and native agriculture. This year, with the partner Easy Treesie they have already planted over 100 native Irish trees.
Access Ireland, a software that improves accessibility for wheelchair users nationally, which has already been awarded €1000 seed funding from the Dublin Bus Community Spirit Initiative.
Second Scoop has continued to empower international protection applicants through a series of workshops and events, working alongside Talent Garden, Colgate Palmolive, and Bank Of Ireland.

SpeakEasy, a project that works with primary, secondary, and university students to enable them to find their voice and be heard.

Commenting on the win, Assistant Professor Roisin Lyons said:

I could not be prouder of EnactusDCU this year. They have had to deal with changing committees, the closing of the university due to covid19 and the move to a virtual competition process – and have adapted brilliantly to all. In fact, they scaled up their efforts and even created an initiative called UpsideSocials to help cheer students up during this time. They are excellent leaders, with a passion for social entrepreneurship, and the projects they have developed have real potential to help many people. We look forward to seeing our team scale the projects over the summer and represent Ireland in September. While the current lockdown has its challenges, it also has some special moments. Yesterday, the entire EnactusDCU team and faculty advisors watched the judges announcement together on a zoom meeting and were joined by some EnactusDCU alumni who showed their support.

Enactus DCU will go forward to represent Ireland at the Enactus World Cup this coming September.