Students sorting coffee cherries after a day of harvest with the Santa Anita community
Service Learning Trips
- Read this excellent article "Coffee 101" published about the trip in Stanford Business Magazine
- Check out students' blog on the Guatemela trip
- View the Guatemala SLIDESHOW!
- Short video about the Guatemala 2007 trip by Jonathan Bolden, MBA 2008 or alternate format [
5 min] - Reporter article by students on Guatemala Service Learning Trip, 2007
Guatemala Service Learning Trip, 2008
Sustainable Supply Chain, CSR, and Agriculture focusing on the Coffee Industry
Christian Rasch, Chairman of ANACAFE, speaking with students about Guatemala's coffee supply chains
Imagine experiencing the coffee supply chain from harvest to roast by working alongside farmers, meeting suppliers that sell their coffee to Starbucks, and speaking with local nonprofit organizations dedicated to supporting the communities and the land that makes our caffeine habit possible.
Students learned about Guatemala's diverse coffee-producing regions and to differentiate coffee varieties and quality in Anacafe's cupping lab. In the coastal highlands they were introduced to the operations of coffee harvesting and processing at the Santa Anita Coffee Cooperative. There, and later with Starbucks and As Green As It Gets, an innovative nonprofit organization working to help coffee farmers capture more value and diversify their incomes, the team gained new insight into the industry's impact on Guatemala people and environment. The trip's faculty advisor, Jasper Sorensen, returned from the trip inspired to author a case study on As Green As It Gets. The case is now a teaching tool used at the Stanford Grauduate School of Business.
Lessons Learned
"It’s hard to express in a few sentences all that we saw, tried, learned, and experienced during our 11 days in Guatemala. Working alongside the former guerilla fighters at Santa Anita, we saw how people could come together to put a long history of war behind them and to build a better future for their community through organic coffee farming. We met social entrepreneurs running biodiesel and education projects aimed at improving the lives of rural and indigenous Guatemalans. We learned how much of a difference one person can make in the lives of poor people by giving them access to loans, capital equipment, and new avenues of distribution, as As Green As It Gets does for its coffee farmers. We experienced a new country, new cultures, and a new sense of respect for people working for the good of others, and we have a new appreciation for all that goes into making a cup of coffee."
-Andy Martin, MBA 2009
