Sorting coffee cherries after a day in the field
![[photo - right image description]](../../images/students_coffee_rt.jpg)
Service Learning Trips
Current GSB Students
- Short film on trip by Jonathan Bolden, MBA 2008 or alternate format [
5 min] - Video of pre-trip speaker John Sage, founder of PuraVida Coffee [ 1 hr 14 min]
- Video of pre-trip speaker Dennis Macray, vice president of corporate social responsibility at Starbucks [ 32 min]
- Reporter article by students on Guatemala Service Learning Trip[
3.7MB]
- 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]
Guatemala Service Learning Trip, Winter 2007
Professor Bob Flanagan debriefs with the students after a day learning about coffee
Eighteen students from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business dedicated ten days over their winter break to travel in Guatemala and work with social entrepreneurs, learning about the production of fair trade, organic coffee and its role in sustainable development. Through intense days of work harvesting coffee, deep conversations with classmates, insightful exchanges with local entrepreneurs, and focused discussions about the future of Guatemalan coffee producers and their families, students experienced a world inaccessible to traditional tourists.
Lessons Learned
The trip challenged pre-conceived ideas and prompted questions about the complex interdependencies of business, nonprofit and government sectors. It spurred curiosity about Guatemala's educational system and opportunities for upward mobility among the nation's youth. It evoked profound respect for the determination and focus of social entrepreneurs to create new opportunities not only for their families, but for their broader community and the nation at large. And it cast a steaming mug of coffee, the role of coffee drinkers, and the power of demand in a very new light, connected to the land and the people who make each cup possible.
