A Decade of DANSIC Riccardo Vide DANSIC started in 2011 after an idea pursued by Steffen Thybo Drostgaard and Lasse Zobel. Over the years, the organisation evolved into what DANSIC is today: an opportunity to shape future entrepreneurs living in Denmark to gain social and professional skills in a startup-like environment. With its rich international environment and network, DANSIC offers merely the starting tools to all volunteers to show at best their talent and resourcefulness. “The DANSIC journey has been an incredible twist of feelings: empowerment, struggle, satisfaction and stress. When I think about it, I am dazzled by DANSIC’s achievements and for being a staple in social innovation in just a decade. I was merely involved in the past two years, but it was enough to open my mind incredibly and think how much passion hundreds of volunteers had contributed to make it a great project. I believe that DANSIC’s success is due to the ambition of many students to test themselves, evolve and learn things outside of their strict competencies. DANSIC was a challenging journey, but it gave us a better understanding of how businesses work, and it provided us with the tools to be successful.” Our first conference involved around 300 Danish people ten years ago. Today we have reached thousands of people across the globe with our events, and we are still on the rise. “I would love to see DANSIC grow even further and gain better reach globally, but the clock is always running against us. It requires a lot of time and energy to fully grasp who we are and what we do, and I think all our past volunteers are conscious about it. Luckily the Board of Directors, the Advisory Board and the rest of our network were always there to help fill in the gaps, but I was amazed that sometimes even some of the partners we reached knew more about DANSIC than us volunteers. Thinking about it now, it could sound scary, but I found it incredibly thrilling. Partnering with someone that already knows who we are always made me smile over the idea that other volunteers did great things in the past. I genuinely think it is because it represents an opportunity to learn for
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all of us, new volunteers. We rapidly understood that we could always look back, learn from past mistakes and achievements, and cooperate with old and new partners to build something better. So the goal at the end is not the expansion, and it was never about it. It is about learning and improving.” Learning a bit of our history, Social Sustainability, Impact, and Partnerships were not only the titles of the first events DANSIC promoted. They were the focus that this organisation had during each event and the driving force that structured all our projects. You can find them briefly explained in the following pages. “Throughout the years, DANSIC managed to promote a sustainable impact in most of the Scandinavian society. The DANSIC21 Board couldn’t be more thrilled and honoured to celebrate ten years of efforts by pushing the organisation’s agenda outside of danish borders, conquering the interest of new regions with our project. This project was achievable just thanks to the changes that other incredible members adopted in the past years. We are so grateful that DANSIC transformed into an opportunity for all international students, no matter where they studied or their nationality. We wish the best for our Alumni network, as well as exciting opportunities for every future DANSICer!”
DANSIC21 wants to salute all past volunteers who fully embraced the complexity of this project. We also want to give warm thanks to Viola Mignoli, Vincent Bruin and Jessica Padman Reich, who shared these few lines and brought a bit of their experience. “DANSIC for us was all about the awesome team of volunteers that remained motivated and engaged until the very end despite having to transfer everything online due to the outbreak of COVID19. This is what DANSIC is made of: great people that come together to create something impactful, overcoming the difficulties that arise on the way!”