The Yeh Family Philanthropy (“YFP”) is delighted to announce that we will continue to be an Intermediary of the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund (“SIE Fund”) for 2 more years until 2020! We’ve had a prolific partnership over the last 3.5 years, and couldn’t be more pleased at the results. We shall focus our efforts anew at building the social innovation ecosystem for the betterment of Hong Kong and the world.

This means our Nurturing Social Minds programme will continue to deliver its highly touted experiential-learning social entrepreneurship & social finance courses at HKUST and CUHK. Our new Fall 2018 courses already started last week! (check our Programme page for more details).

At the same time, Nurturing Social Minds (NSM) is thrilled to welcome our 3rd university partner into the family, The Hong Kong Baptist University (“HKBU”) Business School!

Under the new partnership, HKBU Business School will develop and deliver a new programme on social entrepreneurship for its students. The programme will use a two-pronged approach to teach HKBU students how to start a social venture and to provide marketing knowledge and support to social enterprises. On top of the lectures, students will be learning from pioneers and practitioners from the field of social innovation, both in Hong Kong and internationally

The programme will consist of 3 parts:

1. An introductory course called Social Venture Planning, where students develop their own social business plan proposals
2. Our familiar impact-grant NSM course, where students will work in teams as marketing consultants for curated social enterprises (Social Venture Partners) that have already proven their concept, to help scale up operations with evolving marketing strategies. The student teams will then be pitching on behalf of their Social Venture Partner for HK$250,000 in grant funding from The Yeh Family Philanthropy
3. A marketing practicum, in which students will complete a 120-hour internship with their Social Venture Partner

The NSM course welcomes undergraduate students from HKBU Business School’s Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing, as well as postgraduate programs to join beginning in Spring 2019.

Stay tuned for more exciting news to come!

Our NSM course on Social Entrepreneurship & Venture Philanthropy at HKUST has been featured in the latest issue of the HKUST Business School Magazine – Biz@HKUST as well as in SCMP on 30th August.

Professor Marie Rosencrantz is featured along with our star students (now alumni) Rachel Than and Julian Wong, speaking on their experiences working with Longevity Design House (“LDH”), the social enterprise they won the HK$250,000 grant for in Spring 2017.

Hong Kong’s elderly are already benefiting from the HK$250,000 social impact grant from the Yeh Family Philanthropy and the NSM student team’s work through the delivery of free occupational therapy services for a number of poorer clients of LDH

Equally exciting is that Longevity Design House has also secured HK$3 million in additional sponsorship funding from the Li Ka Shing Foundation to improve the quality and safety standards of elderly peoples’ homes over a 12-month period.

The article also mentions the NSM Alumni program, which worked alongside KPMG to help Longevity sculpt their financial model for venture fundraising.

We are proud to have instructors from both of our partner universities, Marie and Elsie, sharing at the AVPN Conference 2018 in Singapore during the panel “Universities: Shaping the Next Generation.” Marie was the moderator of the panel and Elsie was one of the panel members.

Together with representatives from INSEAD, Singapore Management University and the Indian School of Development Management, they explored how universities can help shape the next generation of change makers.

One of our course alumni from the HKUST Fall 2017 cohort, Stephanie Sun, was also present at the event and shared with us some awesome snapshots.

Needless to say, NSM was very well represented!

To know more about the event, please click here.

Inspiring the next generation to shape our future world inclusively and sustainably!

Our course has been covered in the monthly HKUST eNews sharing among HKUST Business School alumni and the HKUST Community. The latest article, “Impact Extends Beyond Campus” is published in the May 2018 issue.

You can read past featured stories in HKUST’s eNews on the launch of the Nurturing Social Minds program, and  how students extend care through business and social innovation.

Our HKUST Spring 2018 students and Social Venture Partners were blessed with the invaluable opportunity to visit the Credit Suisse HK Office to work out the final kinks in their presentations with 11 Credit Suisse volunteers.

The teams went through mock pitches, and received feedback with video replay from volunteers from Credit Suisse’s senior management team while overlooking a magnificent view of Hong Kong’s stunning harbor. From “less is more,” to “posture for passion”, the CS volunteers dissected every last detail of the NSM students’ pitching prowess. And not a moment too soon! We’re now entering crunch time for the teams to fine-tune their presentations before tomorrow’s Funding Committee Meeting.

The session received extraordinary feedback from all parties and we look forward to further collaboration with Credit Suisse down the road!

The freshest new promo video is out on the homepage! This captures the atmosphere of the program amazingly well.

If you’re looking for an awesome video production team, look no further than Arctic Productions.