These crazy students who want to change the world!
New economic models are emerging the world over and Millennials are not short of creativity! They want to succeed while inviting us to rethink the economy in a different way, integrating social and environmental challenges. Allow us to present four bodacious projects to you.
BooTrek : hiking for all
Hiking for persons of reduced mobility is often limited to dedicated cycleways and flat, smooth footpaths. Wheelchairs and similar vehicles mean it is not possible to explore steeper routes.
Equipment that allows persons of reduced mobility access to hillwalking routes are rare, expensive and not very practical.
We are 3 industrial engineering students and we want to bring more freedom to people with reduced mobility. We are currently designing an all-terrain mono-wheeled chair which, with the help of 2 able-bodied people will allow anybody access to the craziest routes! Driven by our creativity and imagination, we wanted to combine ethics and ecology. That is how we came up with the idea of using bamboo to build the chair. This green steel provides lightness and dynamism to the vehicle. We are pushing our approach even further by incorporating a theme of anti-obsolescence in our design, with a product that can be completely dismantled and each one of its individual parts replaced. We are creating an opportunity for people to set new goals and to share a moment of freedom and enjoyment together in inaccessible places.
BooTrek, Student entrepeneur’ @VentureLab
Email : l.smets.ing@gmail.com
KAMEO Bikes, there’s a new mobility for companies in town
My client’s offices are 2 kilometres away and I’m stuck at the first traffic lights, just like yesterday. This is nonsense, I’m going to be late.
Employees think the same thing to themselves every day in Belgium, alone in their car, stuck in a traffic jam. However, not many of them are going to change their habits and in particular, their mode of transport, even for a fraction of their journeys. Even though other options exist.
We are four young entrepreneurs who are convinced that bikes are an under-exploited form of urban transport in Belgium, especially in the south of the country. The bicycle has a place in the transport policy of all businesses, whatever their size or the industry. We are equally aware that in order to take action, future cyclists need support and not just a great bike.
That is why KAMEO Bikes is providing a tailor-made service to businesses. We are not just offering a complete urban mobility solution for businesses. We will provide daily support to you so that the change will succeed and that our towns of tomorrow will be more pleasant, greener and less congested… and your business will be more profitable.
So, when are you going to start pedalling with us?
Julien Jamar de Bolsée, Thibaut Mativa, Pierre-Yves Adant et Antoine Lust – Young entrepreneurs @VentureLab
Email : julien.jamar@kameobikes.com
Street nurses
The idea for the project to set up a unit of street nurses in Liege came from the observations of professionals working on the ground. We have been working with very vulnerable people for two years and have seen that there is a severe lack of health professionals caring for a growing and increasingly vulnerable homeless population.
By creating a working group with people involved on the ground, we were able to map the Liege network and, thus, target the areas of real want. Namely : long-term rehabilitation into housing through intensive support based on a hygiene and health approach, valuing people and their abilities and the full involvement of the network of social and medical bodies.
By meeting with the Brussels Street Nurses team (IDR) we were able to make our project become a reality. This non-profit Brussels organisation will open an IDR unit in Liege which will be operational in April 2019. We will be employed part-time to start with, what happens next depends on you! Let’s become stakeholders in our life, in our town and in our society.
It always seems impossible, until it’s done.
Nelson Mandala
Fanny et Camille, young entrepreneurs @ VentureLab
Email : fanny.caprasse@hotmail.fr
A new range of quick and nutritionally balanced breakfasts
According to our enquiry, 56% of young people between 19 and 29 think that their breakfast is not nutritionally balanced. Even more compelling: more than 50% of the people asked admitted that they miss between one and seven breakfasts per week, because they don’t have time.
We decided to offer a new range of quick and balanced breakfasts, in drink form, to meet several challenges. First, we wanted to provide a better nutritional balance. Our products will provide a feeling of well-being for the first few hours of the day: feeling full, energetic and achieving better performance at work. Secondly, they will be produced in a way that respects the environment by preferring local and/or undervalued ingredients. We firmly believe that saving time over a meal should not affect either the consumer’s health, nor the environment. This is the added value that we want to bring to the product.
Adding meaning to what we do also enables us to strengthen our intrinsic motivation and the commitment of our future employees.
As young entrepreneurs of the new era, we feel duty-bound to develop our Business Models further than before. The goal of every business is to satisfy a need felt by a group of potential users. But people expect more and more especially in terms of innovation and impact on societal challenges.
Thibault De Herdt et Pablo Villanueva
@StartLab @Smart GastronomyLab @VentureLab Email : thibaultdeherdt@hotmail.com
