At the end of April, students from all E³UDRES² institutions travelled to Belgium to participate in the Blended I Living Lab local week at UC Leuven-Limburg UAS. Starting with a scavenger hunt through Hasselt, a true teambuilding activity, students were able to get their minds in the right direction, literally and figuratively.
On Tuesday, the highlight of the day was a working visit to JAGA, a heating and cooling company that is internationally renowned for its innovative mindset. It was there when students showcased their adaptive mindset: While drawing their ideas on an 25m² white canvas, the power suddenly shut down and all participants were left in the dark. Within 3 seconds, a sky of smartphone lights appeared and everybody continued drawing like nothing happened. What a delight to see this!
Inspiring visits
The UCLL campus was the location to be on Wednesday. In the afternoon, everybody played the life size Social Business Plan Game: With this game, students got more insights in how to develop a business plan that is also social and viable for the market. This was also the message on Thursday, when the group visited the Corda Campus, a place where many startups are located. The Serre was the scene for the closing day: This circular and creative youth meeting place was the perfect match for all teams to give their preliminary pitches after a week full of inspirational speakers and eye opening experiences.
Strong connections
Throughout the whole week there was one thing that bound everybody, students as well as coaches and staff. This one thing also happens to be one of Belgium’s strong points: food. Nothing brings people more together than sharing good food: fries, chocolate, sandwishes, ‘videe’, ‘pistolet’, ‘tompouce’ ... We provided all students with good food and we know this contributed to the connected feeling and made good ideas emerge during this week.
With the organizing team being very happy with the results of the week, good atmosphere and successful student pitches, this feeling was reinforced by the heartwarming comments that students left on the last day. What really got straight to the heart was the after movie made by student Alina - with her permission, we are sharing it with you below. Get inspired by it and join us next time if you want this experience too!
