NC State Jenkins MBA Students Embrace Corporate Social Responsibility as a Call to Action
Since last fall, two groups of students have been working on alternative spring break plans that will take one group to rural Peru and the other to Louisiana. Still others are helping to raise funds to help support the Sequoia Helping Hands nonprofit organization with its work in Kenya. And another group is finalizing plans for the Second Annual Spring Symposium, ‘Making Business Work for People, Planet and Profit,” to be presented April 3 by Net Impact, one of the college’s student organizations.
A common thread among all the students is a commitment to helping others, and they are currently soliciting funds to help cover the cost of their ambitious projects.
Community Improvement and Micro-lending in Peru
A group of 15 NC State Jenkins MBA students will spend their spring break in Trujillo, Peru, where they will provide assistance to Sinergia, a micro-lending agency that makes loans to women wanting to start their own businesses. “It currently has $40,000 in loans out to about 240 women,” said Karen Bell, second-year MBA student who is lead organizer for this project.
Bell wrote a proposal to the college’s MBA program to create a short course that would combine the learning and service components of the project, and spearheaded the fundraising to help make the trip possible. “I value and enjoy CSR work, and have enjoyed the process of putting this together,” Bell said.
The idea for the project evolved after she heard fellow students express interest in a CSR trip abroad and learned about the special needs of a community in Peru from Marianne Bradford, associate professor of accounting at the NC State College of Management.
Bradford has relatives working in Trujillo and knows the depth of the desperate needs of residents in Clementina, a desert poverty-stricken homesteading shantytown at the base of the mountain that overlooks the northern side of Trujillo.
“That made Trujillo a natural choice for this project,” Bell said. “Through Dr. Bradford’s connection with the community, the MBA students participating in this project can provide great benefit to the community and gain personally from this tremendous CSR learning opportunity,” she said.
“For the micro-lending organization, these students will be helping with spreadsheet analyses, business modeling and forecasting,” Bradford said. She is traveling with the students and overseeing the academic component of their experience.
To prepare, they are meeting with Triangle area professionals who have expertise in the economy and culture of Peru. In addition, they are learning about micro-lending practices in developing countries.
“We also will be helping to improve the Clementina community’s physical infrastructure by planting 100 to 200 trees along its border as a windbreak to help control the spread of sand dunes into the community,” Bell said. “As part of this project, we are raising funds to install tubes and build reservoirs in the community for irrigating the plants and to help provide equitable distribution of water among the residents. These efforts, we trust, will have a lasting impact on the area. “
Continuing Support for New Orleans
Twenty-three MBA students are returning to New Orleans, Louisiana, where they worked on a post-Hurricane Katrina rebuilding project last spring.
“This time, our group, in partnership with ACORN – The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – will be working with five small businesses in the ninth ward district, providing assistance in business planning, finance, accounting, and operations. We believe that small businesses are critical in the rebuilding of New Orleans, hence the reason for our support,” said Kevin Idahor, one of the MBA students who has been coordinating the outreach effort and helped develop the special topics short course associated with this trip.
“The idea of the trip is to encourage ownership of CSR as each MBA returns to his or her respective company, and also to gain practical experience using our business education,” Idahor said.
He came up with the idea to write a proposal for a new short course that focused on CSR after seeing the interest expressed by his classmates as he told them about his experiences helping with a post-Katrina rebuilding project in New Orleans last spring.
In writing the course proposal, Idahor drew from what he learned about the topic in the Career and Managerial Effectiveness class that he took during his first semester in the NC State Jenkins MBA program. Since last fall, he has been working on the course and upcoming trip with Lynn Ennis, curator for The Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University. Ennis teaches a class on creativity in business for the NC State Jenkins MBA program and is the instructor for this short course.
“Students in this special topics course are meeting before their trip to discuss a wide variety of information, and will attend a presentation by award-winning photographer John Rosenthal of his Ninth Ward photographs,” Ennis said. Also, each student has been asked write, before departing, what he or she thinks the trip will be like.
They will spend a week working with businesses while in New Orleans. Part of their course assignment is to keep a journal in which they will record reflections on their experiences with small business owners. Each student also will write a five-page report summarizing what corporate social responsibility means to him or her, and how each can become an advocate for CSR. While in New Orleans they also will be touring various cultural institutions in order to begin to understand the uniqueness of the city. There will be a meeting in Raleigh after the trip to further discuss their findings.
Reaching Out to Kenya
Members of the college’s chapter of Net Impact are working with the local non-profit group Sequoia Helping Hands to raise funds in support of the organization’s efforts to buy water tanks for Wikondiek, a community of 8,000 people in Kenya.
“The Net Impact group decided to support this project because clean water will lead to better health, which in turn will lead to better education and better lives for the community’s residents,” said Bell, who is a Net Impact member and is spearheading fundraising for this project, in addition to her involvement with the Peru experience. Seena George, also a Jenkins MBA student, is a member of the board of Sequoia Helping Hands.
The Net Impact chapter is requesting donations from businesses, corporations and individuals to help support the purchase of at least 70 water tanks. Each water tank and fixtures costs about $70. The student group has currently raised 40 percent of their goal. Details about the project, including donation information, is available online at http://sequoiahands.org/project_status.php#netimpact.
Net Impact Spring Symposium
The Net Impact group is also completing plans for its Second Annual Spring Symposium, which will be held April 3, 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the NC State College of Management’s Nelson Auditorium.
“Our theme for this year’s panel discussion is ‘Making Business Work for People, Planet and Profit ,” said Thomas Pash, second year MBA student and Net Impact officer who is the lead organizer for the event.
“Our goal is to engage students, faculty and staff at NC State and in the area, to increase awareness of sustainable business practices. While the university has placed an important spotlight on energy-related sustainability; Net Impact is looking at expanding the focus to sustainability at the economic, environmental and individual levels,” he said.
Juni Asiyo, founder and chair of Sequoia Helping Hands, will present opening remarks. Net Impact is currently lining up panelists for the event. Pash said they hope to have three to four panelists and welcomes volunteers interested in participating to contact him directly.
Opportunities to Participate
Those interested in making a financial contribution in support of the service projects or participating as a symposium panelist may contact the individuals below.
- Community Improvement and Micro-lending in Peru: Karen Bell
- Continuing Support for New Orleans: Kevin Idahor
- Net Impact Second Annual Spring Symposium: Thomas Nash
