In September 2015, Enactus Canada hosted its first Enactus Connects Conference, a nationalwide virtual and in-person event enabling students to learn about social entrepreneurship within the context of Enactus, and to develop and pitch new and innovative project ideas.
In 10 cities across Canada, #ECConnects opened up with the Bigger and Better ice breaker challenge, where teams were given seemingly insignificant office supplies and asked to trade them with whomever they could find for something ‘bigger and better’. Through their innovative and entrepreneurial spirit, two teams from Sackville, New Brunswick started with two paperclips and ended up with two guitars!
One team acquired their instrument from a Mount Allison professor when he was convinced his need for a cupcake, a can of coke and a party hat triumphed his need of a guitar. The team traded the original paper clip to a pen, the pen to a box of smarties, and through some manual labour, a cupcake, party hat and can of coke. The rest is history.
A second team quickly found out a guitar had been acquired, and they decided they needed to find one too!
They started off by trading the paper clip for a pen, then for a sharpie, then a face mask, and finally had a notebook and a women’s health magazine in their hands. After some intense bargaining and making the owner of the guitar aware of her need for a new notebook, the deal was sealed!
The ingenuity the conference was meant to inspire was clearly demonstrated in Sackville that day thanks to the entrepreneurial mindset and epic negotiating skills of Enactus students in New Brunswick.