Today, the main topic was consistent on entrepreneurship. The founder of the Center of Cross Cultural Learning, Farah Cherif D’ouezzan, spoke to us this morning about the steps in her life that led to her eventually founding and leading the CCCL. Following her presentation, a group of local Moroccan students arrived at the center, where we were given a brief amount of time to interact with them all before we were eventually split into four separate groups.

Now split into groups combined with Plus3 students and local students, we were given the challenge to create a product/idea to solve a challenge that everyone in the group had in common. Farah’s presentation emphasized that entrepreneurship didn’t have to be a complex, lengthy idea. Given such, we jumped right in and started discussing simple problems that we could find in common. For those from Pitt, we all had the challenge of water consumption throughout our stay in Morocco. Not being able to drink the tap water, we pitched a filtration straw & bottle subscription system to eliminate this issue for future tourists. Similarly, the locals mentioned that it is common for tap water to become contaminated around Morocco, so they would benefit from the product as well.

I had a handful of observations throughout the process of the exercise. When it came to team dynamics, I didn’t feel any differences when discussing with the locals about ideas. Being similar in ages & interests, it felt like talking to anyone from back home. As for challenges, I couldn’t really spot any. It felt quite seamless when interacting with everyone in my group. I was also surprised by how quickly we were able to expand from the original pitch. After the suggestion for water availability was brought up, new ideas and expansions on our final product were introduced rapidly. In the end, we pulled through a clear success: a well rounded final product & pitch, but the best part was how fun the experience ended up being. At first, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of inventing something new (it feels impossible with all the new things coming out!). But, it turns out it was quite simple as soon as there were several minds focused towards a singular goal.