Jessica Flannery, MBA 2007 and co-founder of Kiva.org, with leaders from Equity Bank in Nairobi, Kenya.
Service Learning Trips
- East Africa Trip multimedia
- Video of pre-trip speaker Yasmina Zaidman, director of portfolio strategies at Acumen Fund [
46 minutes] - Reporter article on East Africa Trip [
PDF 1MB] - East Africa Post-Trip Presentation [ PDF 7.1MB] or online [ 56 minutes]
- Thailand "Barefoot MBA" an intriguing account of two students' work to create a basic business curriculum for aspiring entrepreneurs in rural Thailand as part of the Service Learning Summer Program
- Spring
2006 Service Learning Trips [
PPT 14.8MB]
East Africa Service Learning Trip, 2007
Twelve students set out with a mission to better understand microenterprise development in East Africa and the ways in which they could contribute to this movement. Traveling throughout Kenya and Uganda, they worked with Kiva.org, Village Enterprise Fund, Equity Bank, Women’s Economic Empowerment Consort, Life in Africa, Technoserve, and KickStart, and connected individually with a variety of microentrepreneurs. They discussed policy with local and national government leaders, strategized with leading banking executives, and stayed in a rural Kenyan village with families who graciously welcomed the team with open arms and hearts.
Personal Impact
"These individuals will inspire us for years to come as we continue to pursue answers about microenterprise development—what it will take for small businesses and the organizations that support them to be continually more effective, and what our personal roles should be in contributing to their stories," expressed student leader Jessica Flannery, MBA 2007.
Broadening Reach
Among the most exciting outcomes of this trip is the decision by Professor Garth Saloner and several students to develop a case study on Service Learning partner organization Equity Bank. It will not only introduce students to the standard business topics of strategy definition and organizational alignment, but also consider the relationship between profit maximization and social welfare as well as challenge students to evaluate the relative impact on society of Equity Bank and non-profit microfinance institutions.
Two first year students from the East Africa Trip, Claire Magat and John Joseph, were selected to lead Service Learning trips in 2007-08. Claire is on the leadership team for the trip to South Africa; John will serve as a leader for the trip to Guatemala.
Pontus Pettersson, MBA 2007, received funding through the Service Learning Summer Program to travel this summer to Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ghana on behalf of partner organization Kiva.org. As he said, “I was deeply moved by what we saw on the East Africa Service Learning Trip. I feel a personal imperative to better understand how I might facilitate development in Africa. At the same time, I am humbled by the scale of the challenge and my limited understanding of it. By conducting this project, I hope to further to refine my understanding of the challenges associated with private sector development in emerging economies to identify ways I might be helpful.”
