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Social Impact Project

Broaden your influence
The Social Impact Project is a five-week project for both Master and Full-time MBA students. It offers students the opportunity to serve as an economic or management consultant for an organization with specific social impact objectives.

Key Facts

Profile

  • Students act as an economic or management consultant for an organization with specific social objectives
  • Integral part of the ESMT Master in Global Management curriculum
  • Optional for Full-time MBA students during their summer term

Highlights

  • Students get to apply management theory to a real problem, including fieldwork, research, or project management;
  • Find solutions to that problem, and if possible during the project timeline, help to implement the solutions;
  • Directly help society as a whole – this is not a project to maximize profit, but a project to maximize the welfare or satisfaction of stakeholders that the client organization serves

Target organizations

  • A project with the CSR department in a for-profit company;
  • An NGO;
  • A local non-profit organization;
  • A social entrepreneurship venture;
  • A company launching a new product or service that serves the poorest members of society (microfinance, etc.);

Videos

Master Voices

SIP students working with Fundación Bahía, a Cartagena-based non-profit organization that preserves the environment and empowers the local community.

Master Voices

A summary of the Social Impact Project with Cartera, Italy

Examples of past projects

  • Allianz SE | Group Sustainability, Munich/Germany - Researching and setting up suitable models for further enhancing Global Partnerships
  • Beca a un Pana, Venezuela - Creating a sustainable business plan for a student scholarship fund NGO
  • COVID-DATA, Berlin/Germany - Creating publicity strategy for different COVID-19 vaccines in the market
  • Freundeskreis Nepal e.V., Nepal - Developing a fundraising strategy for an education and inclusion NGO that addresses disability discrimination
  • GIZ, Cambodia - Opportunity assessment of decentralized smart grids solutions for the food & agricultural sector
  • SINA, Uganda - Plastic Upcycling in Ugandan Refugee Camp
  • UNDP, Uganda - Finding innovative solutions to make Uganda Tourism Ecosystem Platform (UTEP) financially sustainable in the mid- and long term

Social Impact Project Reflections

I got the opportunity [during the SIP] to understand and witness the impact that students can have on real-world problems, get in contact with local communities, get to know their needs and in the end be able to help them.

Pino de Wilde, master student

Taking a break from the conventional for-profit businesses, the Social Impact Project with Ashoka in Berlin provided me the chance to learn in-depth about the setup of social businesses.

Sopha Nem, master alum