RSM Hummingbird Fund

For many the university is considered a place where students feel that they can truly define their adult sexual identities. While Erasmus University takes a stance of inclusivity on their website, more can be done to make everybody feel welcome. Rainbow Walkway is our vision to increase acceptance and tolerance for LGBTQIA+ with the painting of a permanent rainbow crossing path. This recognizable symbol will demonstrate the university’s commitment to working towards a learning environment where everyone is welcome and feels comfortable to share ideas, support each other, develop oneself, make new friends, achieve academic successes and be a force for positive change. Read more about the progress here. 

Louisa Mandt proposed a project to use sustainable materials to construct flower beds that would encourage bee population growth and place them around Rotterdam. Louisa also wanted to engage with primary schools to paint the beds and teach younger children about the role bees play in sustainable ecosystems. 

Impact Study & Career Planning is a programme created by Positive Impact Society Erasmus with help of the RSM Hummingbird Fund to help students find a fulfilling career that creates social impact. It is based on the 80.000 hours method, an impact-focused career planning method developed in collaboration with researchers at Oxford University. In this 7-week programme, students will team up in small groups with similar interests. Using the 80.000 hour method, a tutor will guide the group through creating their very own career plan. At the end of the programme, you will have taken the first steps in your career plan and have new connections to help you on your way!

Koen Vegter (MSc Business Information Management student), saw that short-termism was one of the main societal issues that became even more important because of the Covid-19 pandemic. As short-termism prevents us from finding long-term systemic solutions to world problems, he proposed starting a project to educate young people about futures literacy. He received a grant to develop his idea of a foresight academy that teaches people to think in a structured way about the future. Koen is developing educational videos and other tools to teach futures thinking and the development of positive futures that students want to aim for.

Oliver Fuss (MSc Strategic Entrepreneurship) received a grant to start-up a glass upcycling business. He is going to purchase a glass cutter to make vases and other home wear items out of salvaged materials. Oliver is just at the beginning of this social enterprise journey and the Positive Change Initiative will help him along the way.

Bijlesbob had already been launched by Max van Oosten as a tutoring company to connect student tutors with primary and secondary students in Rotterdam. Recognizing the disparity in education across the city and the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on this education access gap, Max knew they were in a unique position to make a different. By partnering with local schools to provide free tutoring to families, Bijlesbob is doing its part to help students overcome these challenges directly. With a grant from the Hummingbird Fund, they are able to immediately start providing access to free tutoring while exploring viable options to make this project sustainable into the future. 

Alongside her studies in MSc Organisational Development and Change, Maartje Zaal founded her mental health charity Let’s Break the Shame in April 2019. Let's Break the Shame was set up with the aim of breaking the mental health stigma in our society. She wants to give everyone a voice and make people feel heard and understood. Maartje is using her grant to create virtual workshops, create videos, create online campaigns, give coaching sessions, and more.

In her third year of her IBA, Camila Cordova was awarded a grant to scale up her social enterprise, Reshirt Rotterdam. They use textile waste to create new products and sells them online. The textiles mainly consist of garments that are damaged beyond repair and would otherwise end up burnt or in landfill. Camila will be using the grant to buy new equipment, such as sewing machines, and a camera for product photography. A priority for Camila was the ethical treatment of garment workers, and she aims to employ workers from groups such as refugee women in Rotterdam with adequate compensation for their skilled work.

The Netherlands is facing an epidemic of elderly loneliness, worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. To help tackle this issue, we have launched a website on which students can quickly and easily type a short letter to an elderly person, to build long-term pen-pal relationships. These cards are designed by talented students in Rotterdam and will soon be sold to individuals and companies in order to enable the venture to become self-sustaining. 

Local sewers make underwear and reusable sanitary pads from local materials. As well as us being a customer, the sewers are also supported in starting a business and selling their products in the community. Here, they produce and sell reusable underwear and pads to increase the accessibility of health and hygiene products in their communities. All income generated will go to the sewers, empowering their pursuit in becoming entrepreneurs.

In essence, CirculEUR provides a 'second-hand shop' on campus where outgoing students can drop objects off instead of throwing them away and incoming students can pick them up for free. Thereby, responsible consumption and circularity should be promoted and fostered among EUR students. The Hummingbird Fund's grant money will be used to further push the marketing of the initiative, acquire new partners as well as organize and equip the project room in Hatta building.

Nature plays an essential role in the development of children. Therefore, Groene Pleinen focused on transforming a schoolyard into a greener playground by implementing four little vegetable and flower gardens and two plant boxes on the school’s playground. As a result, the children were more in contact with nature and they learned about its importance.

We think RSM's ambition to create a vegan oriented campus is a great goal. We want to help accomplish this goal by introducing people to vegan food through our cookbook with quick, easy, and budget-friendly recipes. With 'Plant: The Vegan Student' we hope to bring vegan food to the masses.