Spanish & Entrepreneurship Student Makes It to Finals Round of Business Plan Competition

by guest blogger Darcy Lear

Jordan Meer is a first-year student at UNC-CH and he arrived with a passion for social entrepreneurship, already having launched his own businesses.

In the fall 2009 semester Jordan was a student in the Spanish and Entrepreneurship (ROML 060) seminar that is similar to the Spanish & Entrepreneurship course at UIUC. Like Santiago Beltran, Jordan chose to pursue his own community service-learning placement in the course--working to build an online fundraising site for non-profit groups.

In the spring 2010 semester Jordan enrolled in Venture Creation in the Spanish-speaking World, a course dedicated to business planning and analysis of cases of sustainable development in Latin America. He continued to develop his affiliate marketing business, Support Our Group. Instead of selling cookies, candies, and wrapping paper, groups can simply ask their supporters to sign up with Support Our Group so that when they are doing their everyday shopping online, a percentage goes back to the group.

Jordan entered his plan in the Carolina Challenge Business Plan Competition. In class, we followed him every step of the way--giving feedback on his elevator pitch (he made it to the semi-finals round!), then on his semi-finals presentation. Jordan's project made it into the top eight plans in the competition and on Saturday, March 27, 2010 he competed in the finals round of the competition.

In the Venture Creation in the Spanish-speaking World class we were all proud to participate in the process from behind the scenes. The level of enthusiasm and participation in class is so much higher when the project is "real" and there is genuinely something at stake.

As Jordan and his partners continue with their plans to launch and grow Support Our Group, I will blog about it here.


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