“If I start a company, will you run it for me?” That was the question David Bishop asked his students at The University of Hong Kong more than a decade ago. To David, it only made sense for business students to be given the chance to practise running a business, a similar concept to the moot court, where law students get to practise being a lawyer. “This was back in 2009 and 2010, in the middle of the financial crisis, and getting quality internships was nearly impossible,” said David in an interview last year.
Several rounds of discussion later, David’s students decided that they wanted to start a business in soap-making. Despite not knowing much about soap-making, David and his students worked together to build a socially and environmentally impactful business model, where lightly-used hotel soap bars would be collected, cleaned, and redistributed to the people in need. That was the founding of Soap Cycling, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year of dedicated work in waste reduction, promoting social inclusion, and empowering disadvantaged communities.
“When we started Soap Cycling, there were so many things that we really didn’t understand,” said David. “That’s kind of why we did it because you don’t know what you don’t know. And this was meant to be a learning experience for everyone.”
As Asia’s first and largest youth-led soap recycling charity, Soap Cycling offers a risk-free environment for university students and youth to take up important roles and learn from failures, under the guidance of their mentors and supervisors. From onboarding hotel partners to meeting potential funders, student interns were able to get a taste of working in a professional environment and equip themselves with essential soft and hard skills that are beneficial to their career and personal development.
This model of student engagement, empowerment, and leadership was later expanded to other experiential business courses taught by David, including Foundation for Shared Impact (FSI)‘s Impact Lab Course, which gives university students an opportunity to gain real-life work experience at social ventures, under the guidance of experienced educators, entrepreneurs, and professional mentors.
Long before conversations around DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) became commonplace, Impact Lab was already offering students the opportunities to meet and work with fellow students from diverse backgrounds all over the world to build intercultural sensitivity. Since 2013, we have nurtured more than 1,000 students from 126 different universities and 57 different countries. In our endeavors to cultivate these creative young minds into tomorrow’s leaders, we run seminars to equip them with design thinking skills and the growth mindset to learn from failures.
As a result of this impact-based learning model, some of the students who have taken the Impact Lab Course have since started their own social impact organizations, some have joined the management team of the organizations that they helped found while at Impact Lab, some joined NGO boards, some have led fundraising and community outreach initiatives during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and some have joined FSI to nurture today’s youth into future social impact leaders.
David’s determination to help students develop essential human skills such as moral sensitivity, intercultural sensitivity, and empathy, has not only made him a deserving recipient of The University Distinguished Teaching Award at HKU in 2022, but has also inspired a new generation of leaders and youth to embrace ethical business principles to change the way we do business for good.
Impact Lab’s success as an award-winning experiential learning course would not have been possible without the innovations and guidance provided by Lucia Loposova, Education Program Manager at FSI, and Jon Pedersen, Co-founder and Director of FSI, as well as our mission-aligned partner companies and impact-driven students.
As Impact Lab celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, stay tuned for updates on upcoming events, or get in touch with us if you would like to get involved in the planning and coordination of the events!
Read our interviews with the Impact Lab alumni who have taken their learning to create greater shared impact:
Soomi Hong, Associate Economic Affairs Officer, United Nations ESCAP
Tomáš Kessl, Head of Partnerships & Business Development, EIDU
Justen Li, Senior Legal Consul, Swire Hotels
Vivian Seo, Program Manager, FSI
