Regent University to Launch Entrepreneurship Center with $1 Million Grant
Regent University received a $1 million grant that will help launch its mission to help alleviate global poverty at an economic and spiritual level.
The Living Stones Foundation Charitable Trust, which was established in 1986, recently awarded the grant as the Christian university sought to start up its new Center for Entrepreneurship. The center will assist communities, regions, and nations to help improve the conditions of poor and disadvantaged people around the world.
In the making since 2004, the center will serve nations through business entrepreneurship grounded in a Christian worldview. Projects are now fully set to run in Zambia, Kenya, Rwanda, Nepal and Ukraine with the awarded grant.
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The primary goal of Regent's new center is to contribute to the "'business as mission' movement, which promotes the establishment of businesses as ministries to aid the billions of people globally who are living in economic and spiritual poverty," said Dr. John Mulford, the former Regent University School of Business dean who leads the Center, in an announcement released by Regent.
In the coming year, the assisted entrepreneurship center will use the funding to develop and disseminate training materials and programs tailored to the needs of specific populations and environments; Equip and network international students with a passion for their countries with others interested in "business as mission;" and create an interactive website that will link "business as mission" projects to financial donors globally, according to Mulford.
"The Living Stones Foundation grant will enable us to perform rigorous evaluations of business models and programs in order to identify those that have the greatest potential for impact and then link these effective efforts with investors, foundations,
and government agencies that can fund them," he said.
Future efforts will also be directed toward providing intellectual resources to other academic institutions for the growth of the "business as mission" movement worldwide.
Regent University, a Christian graduate school, was founded in 1978 and currently enrolls 3,300 students with more than 9,000 alumni. An undergraduate program was launched in 2004.
Living Stones Foundation Charitable Trust serves by providing assistance to projects that lead to self-sustaining Kingdom-building ministries.
