Last April, a team of four Amsterdam Business School (ABS) students were named winners of a national business case competition, which challenged students all over the Netherlands to come up with a "go-to-market" strategy for a refugee-owned start-up business. The winning team consisted of Jozef Šaranko, Victoria Noodt, Mark Szucs, Valentina von Bülow, all of the ABS Case Society, an extra-curricular program that focuses on developing and training students' consulting skills.

Co-hosted by Erasmus Sustainability Hub, a collaborative student initiative at Erasmus University in Rotterdam which aims to raise awareness and teach individuals how to incorporate sustainability into their daily lives, and Forward Incubator, an Amsterdam-based foundation dedicated to developing an effective, tailored, and personal approach to entrepreneurship programs for newcomers to become economically independent, the business case was based on a Syrian refugee-owned start-up, First Date Daffee, which produces caffeine-free coffee substitutes from date seeds. Presented in March, the winning proposal from ABS Case society, as judged by a jury consisting of First Date Daffee owners Rahaf & Tamim, Sustainability Hub board member, Erik de Groot, and a consultant from Forward Incubator, focused its strategic marketing solution on targeting millennials through storytelling.

Founded this year by PhD Candidate, Lance J. Cosaert, of ABS' Department of Strategy & International Business, the ABS Case Society is a highly sought-after extracurricular program that is focused on developing and training second-year Business and Economics students' consulting skills. Attracting applications from more than 30 percent of our second-year students, the ABS Case Society is comprised of 25 of the most highly motivated students, who are hand-selected to participate in the program. Its long-term goal is to select, train and feature students in international competitions hosted by other universities, which will provide students not only with tangible business experience but provide valuable learning opportunities as well as garner international exposure for ABS. For more information on ABS Case Society, contact Lance J. Cosaert at l.j.cosaert@uva.nl