MicroServe Philadelphia engages Cabrini College students

Posted by on November 21, 2010

Through MicroServe Philadelphia, Nonprofit Entrepreneur Works Teams Up With Market Research Class at Cabrini College

For the 2010 fall semester, Dr. Eric Malm’s market research class at Cabrini College went beyond reading textbooks and case studies—they worked directly with Entrepreneur Works, a Philadelphia-based microenterprise development organization, to conduct a market research analysis on the nonprofit’s five-county Philadelphia target regions. This project provided deeper insight for Entrepreneur Works’ marketing and outreach efforts while providing students a more “real world” hands-on experience within the classroom.

This collaboration was a project of MicroServe Philadelphia, an initiative by the Philadelphia Higher Education
Network for Neighborhood Development (PHENND) and Entrepreneur Works through the Learn & Serve program, which was established to engage college students with service-learning, capacity-building volunteer projects with local microenterprise organizations.

Divided into groups, each group studied a county served by Entrepreneur Works—Philadelphia, Chester, Bucks, Montgomery and Delaware—and evaluated the primary target client base, researched various data sources and conducted an analysis on trends and demographics. Students discovered various data sources to potentially assist in population research, such as the University of Pennsylvania’s NeighborBase and The Reinvestment Fund’s Real Estate Market Analysis. They also analyzed trends in regions with noticeably large high-school graduation rates where increased outreach at schools may benefit the organization and in suburban areas with flourishing affluent communities who may be leveraged as mentors. During Cabrini College’s Cabrini Day, “Development and Empowerment” several students presented their findings at a Poster Session.

Professor Dr. Eric Malm stated, “One of my challenges as a teacher is to find ways for students to ‘explore’ and ‘discover,’ providing direction without telling the students exactly what to do. Projects like this provide a real opportunity and context that can be motivating for students.”

About MicroServe Philadelphia
MicroServe Philadelphia is an initiative of the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood
Development (PHENND) and Entrepreneur Works to connect university students and Philadelphia-area
microenterprise development organizations with capacity-building, service-learning volunteer opportunities.
Our priority is to develop mutually beneficial volunteer-based relationships that suit students’ career,
academic or community service interests while helping microenterprise-focused nonprofit organizations.

For more information on MicroServe Philadelphia and how you can participate, please contact Sarah Ban at
sban@pdp-inc.org. Students, faculty and microenterprise development organizations are all welcome.