We read the headlines every day. Cities and towns across America have seen businesses shut down. Citizens have lost their jobs and communities are struggling to adequately fund public services. But by partnering with the entrepreneurial spirit and talent of Notre Dame's student body, the South Bend community is solving some of these problems in a new way. Since 2012, the enFocus fellowship program has partnered with the community to ignite change in local companies, nonprofit organizations, and public entities. South Bend native Andrew Wiand tells the story of how hometown pride inspired him to join the enFocus team, and begin to develop a scalable model for economic and community development.The enFocus fellows are graduates of Notre Dame's ESTEEM program, a one-year master's program in innovation and entrepreneurship that develops a select group of science and engineering students to put their skills to work commercializing technology to serve the common good. These entrepreneurs create, shape, and deliver positive impact across a variety of public and private sectors. In its first year, the enFocus team helped save the South Bend community approximately $3.2 million. These are dollars that will support its schools, emergency services, and healthcare clinics—making life better for the people of South Bend.The University of Notre Dame asks you, "What would you fight for?" Learn more about this work and how to support it at http://fightingfor.nd.edu
More from What Would You Fight For?
- 2:01Fighting for the Lives of ChildrenWhen your child is diagnosed with a rare, genetic disease, it feels like you’re rolling down a mountain, just waiting to hit rock bottom, says Doug Berns. When his daughter, Samantha, was diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type C, an incurable, neurodegenerative disorder, he and his wife watched as Samantha’s energy depleted, her balance became shaky, and her laughter quieted.At Notre Dame, researchers in the Boler-Parseghian Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases seek to identify and advance treatments for a number of rare diseases, including Niemann-Pick Type C.For more information: http://ntrda.me/LivesofChildren
- 2:01Fighting to Walk AgainPerhaps no greater motivation exists in this world than hope. For the 450,000 Americans with spinal cord injuries, the hope that they can regain mobility, walk again, run again is often what pushes them through each therapy session. But those same patients often plateau in their recovery, and hope dwindles.Though he’s not a physician or physical therapist, Notre Dame engineering professor Jim Schmiedeler’s work may contribute to better success for these patients. In his locomotion and biomechanics lab, he uses tools from his biped robotics research to better understand the challenges spinal cord injuries present for those learning to walk again. By partnering with researchers at The Ohio State University, Schmiedeler can also test how lessons learned from experiments with the robots, which involve no risk to humans, can be translated into innovative therapeutic strategies that benefit patients. In doing so, he believes his work can help many of those individuals with a spinal cord injury to walk again.Read More: http://ntrda.me/WalkAgain
