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Public Management Program

 

Guatemala Service Learning Trip
Winter 2007-2008

Sustainable Supply Chain, CSR, and Agriculture focusing on the Coffee Industry


Professor Sorensen with students

Christian Rausch, Chairman of ANACAFE, speaking with students while sampling coffee

Imagine experiencing the coffee supply chain from harvest to roast by working alongside farmers on fair trade, organic coffee cooperatives and learning through Starbuck’s C.A.F.E. practices. This is exactly what trip participants on the Guatemala Service Learning Trip experienced.

In Guatemala City, students met with the leadership of Anacafe, learning about Guatemala's diverse coffee-producing regions and to differentiate coffee varieties and quality in Anacafe's cupping lab. The team then headed to the coastal highlands, where some of the world’s finest Arabica coffee is produced, and were introduced to the operations of coffee harvesting and processing at the Santa Anita Coffee Cooperative. Students, alongside of Professor Jesper Sorensen, worked with indigenous farmers and dined with their families. They sampled freshly roasted coffee straight from the source.

The team then traveled to spectacular Lake Atitlán for a counterpoint experience on organic coffee production and a New Year’s gathering. After visits to the ruins at Iximché, students returned to the Antigua area and spent a day with As Green As It Gets, an innovative nonprofit organization working to help coffee farmers capture more value and diversify their incomes.  They completed the trip accompanied by Starbucks’ local agronomist and head of C.A.F.E. practices for Central America, visiting the Bella Vista and San Sebastian farms and connecting with Cafcom and the local dry mill.

Throughout the trip, all were challenged in discussions with coffee producers, the trip’s faculty advisor, and classmates about issues as diverse as economic development, sustainability, scalability, the intersections of business and politics, and supply chain management. Other partners included TechnoServe and Probigua.

Lessons Learned

Of the experience in Guatemala, Andy Martin, MBA Candidate for the Class of 2009, commented: " 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 guerillas 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."

guatemala service learning trip participants as a group