Enactus UCalgary revamps for a new era
By Vama Saini, September 30 2025—
When Crystal Kisakye talks about Enactus UCalgary, the pride in her voice is unmistakable. A fourth-year finance and actuarial science student, she has been part of the club for three years and now serves as co-president.
“We’ve done so many big changes for this year,” she said. “We are completely revamping the club.”
Enactus is a global organization of students who use entrepreneurship to address pressing social and environmental challenges. Teams worldwide have created businesses ranging from bioplastics to food security initiatives.
At UCalgary, the mission is the same.
“We want every single student who joins our club to be someone who’s very curious or even passionate about entrepreneurship and wants to use it for solving some of the world’s biggest issues,” said Kisakye.
The club’s work is showcased each year at regional and national competitions.
“In March and in May, we have our regional and national competitions. We compete against every other school in Canada to see which school has gotten the most impactful projects,” explained Kisakye.
In 2024, their sustainability consulting initiative GreenBiz placed third regionally, while their Empower project, which provides business skills training to immigrant and refugee women, won regionals and placed second in the national competition.
The club has existed on campus for nearly 20 years, evolving from nonprofit-style projects into ventures that generate their own revenue.
“Today, there’s more emphasis on sustainability,” Kisakye said. “Projects need to create impact and revenue so they’re not relying only on grants.”
“A decade ago, they would have been comfortable with seeing programs that are more so nonprofits. Now, they really like to see businesses that would generate revenue since a lot of the time the programs that come out of Enactus need to be able to sustain themselves,” Kisakye further explained.
The club is rolling out three ambitious new projects this year.
Among the new initiatives is Vapourless, which aims to reduce vaping among youth through a “fake vape” device.
“Of course, there are other devices that exist. But this team’s really trying to push themselves to make sure they’re really going to be able to differentiate themselves from every other brand,” said Kisakye.
The Ash Project, which turns waste wood ash and compost into fertilizer, has plans to sell to greenhouses, landscaping companies and eventually farmers.
“We have this student, and he’s probably the first dude to look at a pile of ash and be inspired,” Kisakye laughed. “He did some research and he found that he could actually make fertilizer with ash. So our Ash Project is taking compost and waste wood ash specifically, combining these two things to make a fertilizer.”
The Forest Fires Project utilizes software to predict wildfire risk zones and pairs it with cloud-seeding technology to generate rain in the most at-risk areas — an idea already welcomed by Alberta Wildfire.
“We are creating a comprehensive software system that takes different factors like weather conditions, soil moisture content, and it’s combining things like that to help fire departments predict where wildfires will happen. We are going to couple this with cloud-seeding technology, which is literally just making it rain,” explained Kisakye.
For Kisakye, the Enactus experience can be summed up in one word: “Transformative.”
“It gives students a really unique opportunity to have a steep learning curve, and who you are at the start and who you are at the end is so different,” she said. “We give so many students the opportunity to actually lead projects, lead these businesses.”
“[Enactus] is not just for business kids. We have so many open roles for students in engineering, law, arts and science positions. So yeah, it’s definitely not just for business kids,” emphasized Kisakye.
Learn more about Enactus UCalgary through their website.