A financially-sustainable on-line social enterprise aiming to help increase educational equality and quality globally

Problem

Quite often, only students at the world’s leading universities are fortunate enough to attend talks given by prominent figures in their respective fields. Students at less well-known universities, especially those in developing countries are denied of this privilege. Furthermore, there is a lack of central on-line platform where university students of a certain discipline globally can engage in discussion and debate about their field of study. Thus, the Global Student Education Forum aims to be a disruptive force to help reduce educational equality at the higher education level.

Solution

To help address the problem above, the Forum has successfully invited nearly 30 ambassadors, deans, CEOs, founders, and researchers among other distinguished guest speakers to deliver a talk at the Forum, based at the University of Cambridge. Videos of these talks are then made available on the Forum’s website (www.gseforum.org) free of charge. Furthermore, the Forum’s website also offers an on-line platform where university students in the field of Education can engage in discussion and debate about education research, policy and practice. Finally, the website also offers a built-in facility where members can network with others who share common academic interests.

Example

Non-profit social enterprise

Marketplace

The Forum has no competitor when it comes to providing on-line platform for Education students globally to engage in discussion and debate about education research, policy and practice. Concerning offering free videos of leading speakers giving a lecture or talk, the two main competitors are the iTunes U and TED. Fortunately, education speakers are not their focus. However, if they decide to focus more on education speakers, this would pose a serious challenge to the Forum’s growth as they have more money to invest in their web technology to offer better video watching experience and more translations of their videos.