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Home News Literal Food for Thought Provides Lessons in Social Entrepreneurship

April 10, 2022

Literal Food for Thought Provides Lessons in Social Entrepreneurship

JCU Food Buggy

Experiential learning and community engagement are hallmarks of a John Carroll University education, and they come to life with the Food for Thought food buggy. The food buggy fulfills JCU’s comprehensive and holistic Jesuit mission while actualizing the University as a social entrepreneurship leader in Northeast Ohio.

This experiential learning project is designed for students to creatively leverage the capacity to make a profit and to make a difference by building and nourishing community with those in need. 

“We want students to see and understand the power of collaboration and the responsibility they have to build and nourish community. We want students to use this opportunity to become thought leaders, change agents, community builders and ethical leaders,” says Sister Katherine Feely, Director of the Center for Service and Social Action at JCU.

Each semester new students earn credit for operating the food buggy; they implement a business model to sell food for a profit with corporate and community partners; in turn, they use profits to feed Cleveland’s homeless.

“Being able to choose a hot meal off a menu provides a dignity that many facing homelessness don’t usually receive during their day-to-day life. Our food buggy enables students to understand the power of that simple gesture,” says Dr. Doan Winkel, Director of Donnelly School of Leadership & Social Innovation at JCU.

To learn more about the entrepreneurship program, please contact Dr. Doan Winkel, John J. Kahl, Sr. Chair in Entrepreneurship and Director of the Muldoon Center for Entrepreneurship, at dwinkel@jcu.edu