Emily Fulton – nominated for President’s Award for Engagement

Emily Fulton – nominated for President’s Award for Engagement

Emily Fulton, a Global Business (USA) student, was recently nominated for the DCU President’s Award for Engagement, based on her work with the Enactus DCU project ReNu.

The President’s Award for Engagement is designed to celebrate the engagement of staff and students in the life of the wider community.  It recognises outstanding contributions by staff and students to the engagement mission of DCU.  Engagement is defined widely to embrace civic engagement, public engagement, sustainability engagement and student engagement.

Here Emily tells us about her involvement with ReNu:

“I was delighted to be nominated for this year’s Presidents Awards in the Student Category. I was nominated for my work with ReNu, a social enterprise I helped found as part of the Enactus society in DCU. My continuous work within the project on environmental issues was recognised and resulted in my nomination.

Enactus is an international society with the aim of inspiring students to engage in social enterprise.  Enactus is in 35 countries internationally with over 72,000 students involved globally each year.  In Ireland, there are 10 higher level education institutes that have an Enactus society.  DCU has one of the most successful Irish Enactus societies, having won 6 of the last 10 Enactus Ireland National Competitions.

I joined the Enactus society in DCU last year as the content creator.  I was extremely dedicated to the society throughout first year and I went on to represent Enactus DCU as a presenter at the National Competition in 2020. This was another successful National Competition for DCU and we won, progressing onto the World Cup.  We worked extremely hard throughout the Summer of 2020 and went on to place in the top 16 at the Enactus World Cup.  This puts Enactus DCU in the top 1% of Enactus Societies globally.  I have continued working with the society this year as the Advisory Board Liaison Officer. 

Within Enactus DCU, I have been involved with ReNu.  In November 2019, Enactus DCU felt it was important to introduce an environmental project to our portfolio.  This prompted us to start ReNu.  I was one of the founders of ReNu along with two others and have been a co-project lead on this project ever since.

ReNu has a focus on food waste.  We are in the process of finishing the first prototype of our smart compost bin.  We use sensors to monitor the conditions of compost which allows the user to easily create usable compost or fertiliser.  The sensors collect data which is used to create custom recommendations that is sent to the user through an app. The users will be informed when to mix the compost and what materials to add to it.  Our compost bin is barrel in shape so that it can be easily turned by the user. Our main goal is to make composting as easy as possible while also ensuring that the compost created is usable.

The ReNu composter offers a new, simplified way to manage food waste, encouraging a circular economy mindset within our communities.  ReNu was presented at the early stage project pitch competition as part of the Enactus Ireland National Competition 2021 and won.  We will represent Enactus DCU and Enactus Ireland at the World Cup in October.”

Congratulations to Emily on her nomination and we wish her every success as she heads off to Northeastern University, Boston, for the second leg of her Global Business (USA) degree.