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Students lead, serve, and change. Students have logged thousands of miles, touched hundreds of lives, and come away with a shared statement—“The trip changed my life” as a result of Global Leadership and Service Projects (GLSPs) organized by the International Business Honor Society IBHS). One trip took good Samaritans from the College of Business Administration to desperately poor areas of Nicaragua; the other, the second GLSP to Thailand, brought students from the college, two other U.S. universities, one European university, and two Thai universities together to work with children and women in need. The purpose of the GLSP is to help create responsible business leaders who understand the environment in which they will be working. And all the GLSPs have done just that. Between December 26, 2005 and January 8, 2006, seventeen students in Team Managua, led by Norman Uriate, and twelve in Team Granada led by Christian Jarquin, traveled on rugged mountain roads to remote areas of the region to help in a variety of ways as part of the NICA GLSP: “Nicaragua December of Dreams Trip to Help Kids.”
“Our primary project took place in the little town of Los Fierros, where we did substantial renovations on the dilapidated building where about 100 kids attend school,” Uriate said. For seven days, the students, aided by many of the 400 families in the town, built an exterior wall, painted inside and out, replaced broken or missing windows, and repaired a swing set. “It was like a Habitat for Humanity construction project,” he said. A celebration at which each child received a bookbag with a toy capped off the week’s work.
The group also fixed up a second remote school, sent materials to a third for a local renovation effort, and coordinated—through a contact Uriate had in the United Nations’ World Food Program—to get food to the children. Simultaneously, Team Granada spent twelve-hour days distributing items to three orphanages, two schools, and various slums. “We conducted some English lessons, had sing-alongs and dancing, played with piñatas, and handed out cookies,” said Jarquin. “Mainly, we focused on passing out the first toys, shoes, and school supplies these children had ever had and on meeting with the directors of orphanages, nuns, and the children of the streets. We also met the archbishop of Granada.” The results exceeded Jarquin’s expectations. “On paper, we thought we would touch the lives of 1,350 kids, but it was actually more than 1,500. In one school, Escuela Miravalle, 300 children were packed inside a classroom waiting to get their donations and there were lines everywhere we went.” Between March 16 and 26, 2006, students headed to Thailand for the second GLSP–Bangkok, using lessons learned from the inaugural 2005 trip to help them anticipate problems and plan accordingly.
Two sites remained from last year: the Klong Toey Community School and the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women (APSW), while the Children’s Creativity Foundation (CCF), another community school, was added. “The objective for the two children’s sites was to provide cultural, hygienic, and self-promotion education to impoverished children from ages three to twelve who would not receive this education otherwise,” said Stephanie Moreta, project coordinator, site leader for the Klong Toey Community School, and one of three students to receive a scholarship from the Executive Dean’s Office and the Department of Management and International Business. Moreta, who participated last year, had an emotional return. “When I got off the bus the first day, a boy we called James rushed up to me and hugged me and I started to cry,” she said. She also experienced the challenges of being a leader. “I had a lot more management issues to deal with this year than last year,” she said. “That made it more stressful but also more rewarding. I was most affected by being managerial, seeing the impact we were having, and working with a group of highly-motivated, amazing students who helped me get what I did out of the trip.”
Milvia Suarez led the CCF project, and students from two Thai universities—Rajabhat Chandraksen University and Chulalongkorn University (Chula)—also participated at both children’s sites to help translate and implement the curriculum the IBHS students had developed. Since the first GLSP–Bangkok, the objective of the APSW site has been to establish a business plan for selling textile products the women make so the items can be sold in the United States. Such sales will help keep the non-profit running and also will serve as jobs for the women so that they can become functional members of society. “The women at APSW are either ex-prostitutes, mentally or physically abused, or have HIV/AIDS, and many of them have children,” said site leader Adriana Perez, who also served as chairperson of GLSP project. “We used our business skills to evaluate which products they make that would be marketable and all the other business issues involved, such as finance, inventory, and distribution.” The students plan to create a web site that will include a video to put a human face on the plight of the women, introduce future GLSP participants to what they can expect, and help future fund-raisers interest corporate sponsors.
Karen Uhring, University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and Jacob Pierce, Boise State University, both of whom had demonstrated a commitment to community service, also won scholarships and are planning to execute GLSPs at their schools—exactly what the organizers hoped would happen by including students from other universities. For both, the greatest impact came when they visited houses in the impoverished area around the Klong Toey school. “For me, the most memorable experience was the ‘house tour’ of the children's,” Uhring said. “I will never forget how proudly each of them presented their homes and introduced us to their families.” “Upon seeing their homes, I had an epiphany in the true sense of the word,” Pierce said. “I learned that my role in promoting social justice is not to fulfill their lack of things but to work along the side of education that brings awareness and a desire for change.” The trip also was marked by the inclusion of the first international participant, Cécilia Serin, who attends the International University of Monaco and who shot the video at APSW. Her university is about to have the first international IBHS to be chartered by the college’s national model chapter, empowered to charter other IBHS chapters globally.
“I had the opportunity to work at all the sites but I spent more time at APSW, where I interviewed three women,” she said. “Their stories had a strong impact on me, as if I was faced with a reality that the world wants to ignore. Afterwards, I was even more determined to do whatever I could to help these women.” She looks forward to establishing a GLSP along with the support of her university and partners in Indonesia, where she already has worked on projects for more than a year. “My university is willing to encourage students to get involved in community service and my Indonesian partners have asked for students to come and work on the projects,” she said. After a thorough debrief, IBHS president Mark Elbadramany and IBHS members have begun to work on the GLSP–Bangkok 2007, at which their Thai partners are expected to play an even greater role. In the fall, trip veterans, who now have so much experience to offer, may become consultants to other groups on campus that want to have a GLSP of their own. “The GLSPs are a community service vehicle, which we describe as a ‘dual side experience without frontiers,’” said Robert Hogner, associate professor of management and international business and coordinator of the college's Civic Engagement Initiative, who accompanied the students on the GLSP–Bangkok for the second time. “After last year, we thought, ‘what more can we ask for?’ and this year we got it again.”
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