* Can you inform us about your Society?
Our society is known as the Problem Solving Society. We are a society that believes in identifying problems or issue areas and subsequently working to find a solution hence our motto 'Take the initiative'. We often see things in our lives and immediate environment, to which we can contribute to positively or even enrich but we sit back and wait hoping someone else may do it instead. Our society works against that by encouraging our members to enact the change they want to see and by helping members develop their skills ranging from innovation to organization. By doing so we hope to give not only our members the opportunity to be at the forefront of positive contribution, but also give back to the larger society through the multiple activities we host with the help from local organizations with which we partner up.
* What are your activities?
Throughout the semester we host a number of activities and as I mentioned earlier activities tend to range from those geared towards innovation to community service. One of the biggest event we co-host is the Hult Prize, which is a start-up accelerator for social entrepreneurship and is a prestigious award which we highly encourage students to take part in, as it is considered the student version of 'Nobel Peace Prize'. In addition to this we also host what we call 'Innovation Night' where tech meets play in an effort to encourage students to take up innovation and also showcase the latest in innovation. Other events we host through the academic year include Programming Contests, to develop programming skills which are highly sought-after as more companies make the inevitable move to incorporate IT. The Math Olympiad is also one of the activities we host in addition to several workshops such as marketing workshop. We also host what we call the public service session. In this context, we identity a local organization that we can team-up with to give back by volunteering or raising funds. Last year, for example, we teamed up with the local branch of the international SOS Children's Village. We also take part in the Spring Music Festival.
* What are your plans for the upcoming terms?
Due to the overwhelming positive response we received from our events last semester we intend on making last year's events the core of the Problem Solving Society. We are bringing the events back, bigger and better. We intend on having the Innovation Nights, the Workshops, the contests and hopefully team up with more organizations for the community service session. We will also be bringing back the Hult Prize. We hope people are excited as we are and use this break to think about their ideas and work on them. We do not want to give away too much too soon with regards to the events, rest assured we are looking forward to a creative semester.
* What else do you want to say before we finish the interview?
At the heart of our society lies creation; creating products, tech, better ways to do things, creating a better society but an equally important thing we do is here we create family. At our society you will meet with people from various backgrounds and geographies, strangers if you will, who become family overnight. We redefine what 'charity begins at home' means, by saying that we can give back by creating a home first , something we here strive to do and like all families we have room for more.