Tweeting from the Clinton Global Initiative University

Bill Clinton and Brad Pitt at CGIU 2008

Over the next few days, more than 1,000 passionate undergraduates will descend upon Austin, Texas for the second annual Clinton Global Initiative University program. Each of these students has made a “commitment” to action in areas such as Poverty Reduction and Climate Change. If you want to know where American social entrepreneurship will be in five years, check out the projects that launch at CGIU.

I’m attending mostly in my capacity as the founder of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University. I’ll be speaking on a panel for university presidents and nonprofit representatives. Hopefully, I’ll get to talk about the big three things I think university’s need to shift; the quality and quantity of service-based experiential education, the structures for nurturing student entrepreneurship, and the support for job seekers interested in social change. These are some of the needs I mentioned in my Top Trends 2009 post on ‘globally-engaged education,’ and which my colleague Ryan will be talking about in his ongoing “Entrepreneur Education” column.

I’ll blog a few times when the event gets into topics conversations relevant for the social entrepreneurship community on this blog. I’ll be tweeting much more frequently, both on my personal account @nlw and the account I use for all this social innovation @socialentrprnr.

There will also be a number of other really cool folks Tweeting from GCI:

GlobeMed
@jonshaffer, @peterluckow, @victorroy
GlobeMed is a national network of student global health partnerships. Moving beyond the “duffelbag medicine” paradigm of student medical service, GlobeMed helps chapters form sustainable partnerships with international community health organizations.

Ken Banks, FrontlineSMS
@kiwanja
Ken Banks is the founder of Frontline SMS, a mobile command center that's helping nongovernmental organizations better coordinate activity from community health to disaster relief.

Kjerstin Erickson, FORGE
@kjer
Kjerstin Erickson is the founder of FORGE, an innovative refugee empowerment program that helps refugees in sub-Saharan Africa launch social entrepreneurship initiatives.

RGK Center For Philanthropy and Community Service - University of Texas, Austin
@RGK_Center
The RGK Center " builds knowledge about nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and volunteerism, and to prepare students and practitioners to make effective contributions to their communities and countries." They've also teamed up with Dell for the Dell Social Innovation Competition.

Mark Arnoldy
@markarnoldy
Mark Arnoldy is a University of Colorado student working to produce a life-saving, fortified peanut butter in Nepal at the confluence of development, agriculture, and public health.