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BizBuzz
Opportunity brews at Honduran coffee cooperative, with help from student volunteer.
Placing your business on the Internet opens the window to the world. So believes Capucas, a coffee-growing cooperative in Honduras. By expanding its presence in the global marketplace via a new web site, the Capucas cooperative hopes to reach new customers who appreciate the high quality of its organic coffee beans. Such potential business growth supports the region’s collective efforts to promote sustainable development while reducing poverty and increasing the quality of life in the rural communities of western Honduras. To help design and launch the new web site, Gustavo Cardenas (MBA ’07) traveled to Honduras in August, 2007, as a volunteer for the College of Business Administration’s John Ogonowski Farmer-to-Farmer (FTF) program, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He learned about the FTF volunteer assignment while enrolled in the International Entrepreneurship class taught by Alan Carsrud, executive director of the Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center and clinical professor of management. A background in technology and web design combined with fluent Spanish-speaking skills made Cardenas a perfect candidate. “Developing countries such as Honduras often need a jumpstart to become more competitive in the global marketplace,” Cardenas said. “The Capucas assignment provided me with an enriching, rewarding experience. These warm, lovely people work hard with limited resources, always looking for creative ways to sustain their businesses and their communities.”
Honduran project creates tale of coffee beans and HTML coding. Before beginning to build the web site, Cardenas toured the Capucas cooperative’s facilities and received a comprehensive tutorial on the coffee-growing process. Then, work on the web site began in earnest. “We combed through much information and many photos from past harvests to select just the right words and images to highlight the characteristics that set Capucas apart from other regional coffee growers,” he said. “We strove to design a friendly, dynamic web site appropriate for an international audience.” Cardenas feels that the creation of the web site generated improvements in two major areas: business technology and social awareness. “Knowledge-sharing among everyone involved in the project fostered new ideas about organizing, planning, and marketing the cooperative’s product through the web site,” he said. “What’s more, the web project generated interest within the coffee growers’ community, helping them see the Internet as both a venue for commerce and a change agent for their community.” Learn more. Capucas cooperative site, still under development: http://www.geocities.com/capucascoffee/.
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