Student Alyssa Polizzi works with Durham youth at the Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club.

Durham, NC - For a group of students participating in the Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative (ELI), a highlight of the first week of class was talking about "next steps" in a learning adventure they began back in the spring. ELI, run through the Hart Leadership Program at the Sanford School of Public Policy, introduces Duke students to concepts of entrepreneurial leadership and social enterprise development.

The program uses both classroom learning and community-based experiences to help students create high-impact, innovative solutions to pressing community problems.

During the spring 2009 semester, ELI students began exploring how social entrepreneurship can be used to address pressing social problems. Over the summer, eight ELI students used DukeEngage funding to partner with local non-profit organizations and develop entrepreneurial solutions to community challenges in Durham.

These projects ranged from working with the Boys and Girls Club to develop plans for a teen center, to conducting market research to help TROSA (a local non-profit organization) launch a grocery store that will benefit recovering substance-abusers.

The students worked in teams throughout the summer, living together in Durham and meeting frequently to discuss learning points from their projects. ELI students also took trips to New Orleans and Washington, DC to meet with social entrepreneurs and discuss best practices in the field.

Linda Peng, a junior who worked with the TROSA grocery store project, said the summer was fulfilling on both a personal and academic level.

 "I valued the experience of making friends with some people who never had the opportunity to attend college, who lived most of their lives in environments defined by a wretched cycle of substance abuse," Peng said. "In that process, I grew to be more comfortable with my own abilities and my own potential to learn."

Peng, along with several of her ELI classmates from the summer, will continue the experience this fall in Christopher Gergen's ELI capstone seminar: Social Enterprise Development (PPS 144). The seminar is designed to help students develop business plans, funding strategies and other tools that can empower entrepreneurs to actually launch social enterprises.

One of the goals of the initiative is to positively affect the Durham community. At the end-of-summer banquet, Durham Mayor Bill Bell told the students, "the issues of social innovation you are helping to support are very important to this community. You are dealing with practical issues and providing practical solutions."

As the fall semester unfolds, ELI students who worked on projects over the summer will be joined by a new crop of Duke students. Together, they will work in teams to continue developing the summer projects and exploring new ideas for social ventures.

But for now, the ELI students who just finished their summer projects can enjoy entering the first week of class with good sense of the work that lies ahead.

Photo below: ELI students listen to Luther Gray, community program coordinator at the Ashe Arts Center in New Orleans.