Katie Verigin is g.e@ubc’s Lean LaunchPad & Visual Communications Intern. Katie has been volunteering with the LLP program at UBC since January 2014. She enjoys supporting participants in the roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship. She finds the process of witnessing the LLP participant teams start their businesses from just an idea and blossom into a new venture particularly exciting. Read More.
This past summer, Katie participated in Sauder Social Entrepreneurship – Kenya (SSE – Kenya) where she had the opportunity to apply skills she learned during the Lean Launch Pad in Kenya. SSE – Kenya helps Kenyan youth start their own businesses through Social Entrepreneurship 101 – a five-week course that brings together students from UBC in Vancouver, Canada and Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya to teach young people how to develop business plans. The students mentor the Kenyan participants in Kibera and Mathare through developing their ideas, improving their skills through extensive workshops, providing guidance in their search for funding, and launching their new businesses.
“(In this context), being and entrepreneur meant having control of your own destiny. Fighting that stereotype of unemployment and getting out there and doing it yourself. Being able to provide means for their families, for their friends, making their community better as a whole. For them, it was an enabling force that would allow them to make their lives a little better.”
Katie Verigin g.e@UBC Intern – Reflections on Her Entrepreneurial Experience in Kenya from UBC UILO on Vimeo.
