Venture for Change Summit 2023: Empower 16 Teams to Embark on Their Journey of Social Innovation

From April 14 to 16, Columbia Global Centers | Beijing hosted the 2023 Venture for Change Summit as the academic content provider.

16 Selected Teams Aim to Transform Our World

Among a significant number of teams of applicants, this 2.5-day intensive boot camp convened 16 groups of more than 100 Chinese middle and high school students to develop their social venture ideas and practice in a series of pitches before competing in the final presentations in front of a panel of scholars, business professionals, and social action experts.

This year's Gold Award winner is Froot, a community membership program for families that want to engage their kids in sustainability and agriculture. Team members include Bayan Changizi, Maxwell Sobhani, Luca Morano, and Ziping Chen. Standing out from the three-round roadshows, Froot received 15,000 RMB from Qi Social Innovation Center as their seed funding, allowing them to develop and launch their social venture.

"Our next steps will be to build a community around Froot, plan and launch our first event, and continue to deliver organic and sustainable products from farms to local communities," said Changizi, Co-founder of Froots.

Two silver prize winners, Reconnect and Lavolutionzz, received prize money of 8,000 RMB each. Eco-Circle, Dec 3, and Future Light won the bronze prize, with prize money of 4,000 RMB per team.

Elizabeth Walker Sobhani, Director of the Qi Social Innovation Center, encouraged the winning teams to take full advantage of resources and seed funding: "I wish you all continue learning problem-solving skills and developing your entrepreneurial mindset."

The judging rubric for the final pitch was based on four overall criteria: concept, sustainability, innovation, and presentation. Eight selected teams presented to judges consisting of Vivian Li, Founding partner of Beijing DRGS Tech Co., Yue Shao, Former COO and Social Impact Consultant of Energy Foundation, William Hsu, Head of Legal, Risk Management and Compliance of CDH Investments, and Han Chen, Social Innovator of Super 8 Hotel. They had a wealth of experience starting and growing companies and social ventures or investing in them.

"Built on the Beijing Center's business incubation program to empower the traditional entrepreneurial undertaking, we successfully take one step further and seek to facilitate social innovation among youth by connecting the dots of addressing unmet needs and leveraging the existing startup incubation capacity," said Helena Xiao, Associate Director of the Beijing Center.

Throughout the summit, 16 teams participated in three rounds of pitching. These opportunities helped them further refine their social venture ideas and pitching skills and build business capabilities in addressing social issues.

A New Type of Education: From Classroom to Real World

The summit provided an immersive program to support students in completing their learning process through keynote lectures, themed workshops where students met their mentors to design and prepare for the pitches, and a learning workbook and platform, a resource bank of videos, articles, and examples of youth social ventures.

The summit brought together leading experts and social entrepreneurs to share and engage with students. Amazing mentors lined up to participate were Xingyu Wang, Co-Founder of Beyond the City, Callum Douglas, Executive of Sustainability and Biodiversity, Chenxi Ouyang, Co-Founder and CEO of Bright & Beautiful, Yonge Qian, Founder and President of A Better Community, Felicia Li, Founder of Rainbow Cafe, Dan Chen, Founder of 1KGBox, Hubert Lin, Executive Presentation Coach of Message Coach, Jonas Wolf, Founder and CEO of LeaDAOship, Jerry Liu, Founder & CEO of Centennial Spring Management Consultant Co., and Wahed Ahmadzai, Founder of NHUB and Secretary General of Alumni Talent Alliance.

Although participating teams were at different stages with their solution idea development, our lectures, panel discussions, and workshops were designed to lead students to walk through the four phases of accelerating their social ventures, from investigating and ideating, to innovating and making an impact.

Lecturers of the summit were Rene Kawasaki, International Children's Peace Prize 2022 Winner, Lisa Liang, Senior Vice President of Warburg Pincus, Min Peng, China Market Development Lead of Shell Chemicals & Products, Rong Shang, Vice President of Operations, Communications, and Public Affairs of Microsoft Asia Pacific R&D Group, and Qi Li, Senior Manager of Financing Department of Zhonghe Rural Credit and Husayn Anwar, Founder of ERMChina & Sinosphere. 

One of the themed panels focused on ESG practices across multiple sectors and why business models need to be social-good oriented. Invited experts shared hands-on experiences and various cases in their career and business scale-up models to provide comprehensive instructions for students to understand how to incorporate social innovation factors into developing their businesses.

"We need to equip these students innovators to be changemakers," said Yonge Qian, who founded A Better Community to provide individuals and institutions consulting services in public welfare and social goods. He introduced students to the motivation and challenges of starting a social venture and elaborated on the possible internal and external obstacles that students might face. "I am not discouraging you from having bold ideas, but I wish you to understand that you must be very resilient to break through bottlenecks and find the right balancing line."

From Tests to Creating and Pitching their Own Social Venture

Professionals and entrepreneurs led workshops covering designing the name, mission, minimal viable product, target market and distribution channels, and financial seeds of social ventures, which fully prepared teams to practice giving an 8-minute pitch in the final round.

Student mentor Dan Chen, Founder of 1KGBox, a public welfare organization focusing on the innovative design of rural education, provided her feedback on how to pitch like "rock stars": "It is vital for each student to not only have the ability to identify problems and solve issues close to them, but also cultivate public speaking skills."

"One of the biggest challenges during the learning process was that I had to improve my presentation skills," said Albert Liu, Co-founder of Future Light. "Unlike pitching to the wall, I could reach my full potential because I was speaking to audiences who could understand me and gave me instant feedback. During the final pitch, our group exceeded every member's expectations as we managed to speak very naturally and confidently."

As the youngest two participants, Liu and his team member Shaoqing Li, provided online and offline exhibitions through artificial intelligence art to engage students in more diverse and creative approaches to learning.

Student mentor Chenxi Ouyang said: "It is a great journey for me to pass on important skills in creating a sustainable business from 0 to 1 to young entrepreneurs in the future. I am very proud to see my mentees expound their journey of social innovation from finding a social problem to prototyping an innovative venture and even showcasing their business models and marketing strategy to senior entrepreneurs in the final pitches."

Ouyang dedicates to helping left-behind girls in rural China build self-esteem and unlock potential through her social venture Bright & Beautiful.

Each team gained confidence and motivation and is willing to continue looking for guidance to make ideas into reality. For everyone, Venture for Change Summit is undoubtedly an unforgettable experience, an incredible journey of a new type of education.

In the closing remarks, Helena Xiao told all participants and audiences that the summit was not the end but the beginning of the Beijing Center's social impact program and students' journey in developing their social ventures and experimenting with innovative concepts. "Our social impact fellowship and the follow-up programs will continue to provide a major boost to students within and beyond the Columbia community," said Xiao.