Combining social service and Internet seminars in Latin America

By June Carolyn Erlick

One doesn't expect to find a community schoolhouse on the sweltering Nicaraguan coast named "Harvard Business School 1997-1998."

The schoolhouse, one of seven new elementary schools under construction in Latin America, is the result of a Harvard Business School project, itself an unlikely mix of conventional fundraising, seminars on the Internet with Harvard Business School alumni and other executives in Latin America, and an adventurous three-month 16,000-mile odyssey from Boston to Rio by car and motorbike. The trip, chonicled in detail on Expedition for Education's offbeat Website -- www.expeducation.org -- included a shared living experience with Yanonami Indians, a four-day riverboat trip, a karaoke festival, excursions to local schools, and 19 car breakdowns.

The Expedition for Education project started more than a year ago when a group of Business School students decided they wanted to get involved in a socially relevant project right after graduation. Latin America seemed to be the logical place, because three of the students had strong Latin connections. Stephen Le Poole was already sponsoring a child in Bolivia; Paul Ostergaard had lived in Brazil for two years; and Ernesto González-Quattrini is from Peru.

The travel team was made up of six members: Aldo DiBelardino (U.S.), Ernesto González-Quattrini (Peru), Thomas Høegh (Norway), Steven Le Poole (Holland), Kerty Nilsson (U.S.), and Paul Ostergaard (Denmark).

"This was a practical way to update the Internet skills of Harvard Business School alumni and also to network to raise money to construct schools," said González-Quattrini, who is now working with the Intergen company in Miami. "Everyone travels after business school. They just take off on a vacation. So we thought of combining a trip with our desire for social service. The journey was the most flashy, visceral part of the whole project, but the hard work of raising funds actually came beforehand."

The Expedition tied together the Adopt-A-School fundraising project with an Internet seminars program. All proceeds from the corporate adopters and the Internet seminars went directly to Childreach, the Rhode Island-headquartered U.S. member of PLAN International, a global, child-focused development organization. The group hosted a party and canvassed Latin American and U.S. companies to raise money for school construction. The Expedition members were backed by five student clubs, spearheaded by the Club Ibero-Americano. They also received strong support from the Harvard Business School administration, eventually winning the Dean's Award for "enhancing the (HBS) brand name for non-academic achievement."

Bob Burakoff, director of the Initiative on Social Enterprise at Harvard Business School, commented "This is a great project. We at the Business School are interested in applying entrepreneurial skills to social challenges, and this project combines a lot of things ranging from the creative use of technology to mobilizing partners from different sectors of society. This project is a very hands-on one and addresses social challenges in an inventive and new way."

The project not only resulted in the construction of schools, but reinforced the Harvard Business School emphasis on lifelong learning, González-Quattrini noted. Many alumni in Latin America have been marginalized from the rapidly-developing Internet world because of a lack of information.

The seminars, which encouraged the use of high technology in developing countries, took place in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. They provided a brief introduction to the Internet, discussed business opportunities on the Internet, with examples from existing businesses and cutting-edge companies, explained the resources of the Harvard Business School Alumni Net, and introduced Seminar participants to the Expedition for Education and its objectives, including the activities of PLAN International.

The trip was an intriguing medley of campy adventures, corporate networking, and social zeal.

The six travelers ate roasted monkeys with the Yanonami Indian tribe in Brazil and shared macaroni, which the Indians smothered in Parmesan cheese.

"At first, the encounter was a little weird," the group describes in its series of Trail Tales on their Internet website. "We didn't speak their language and their Portuguese was basic at best. So as the afternoon rains fell, we just stood in one of their homes staring at each other. The solution to the awkwardness, we discovered, was to just do what we wanted to do. We unfolded our hammocks and lay in them. They, in turn, went about doing their business: lounging in their hammocks, kicking their dogs, cooking 'manioc' (similar to yam) all at a very leisurely pace. After some time, they became used to us and we were able to sort of interact with them. . . .

"The Yanonami ate throughout the day. . . . Paul and Kerty journeyed quite a bit further downstream in an effort to bring in some Piranha for dinner, but their hooks came up empty. All was not lost, however, because in the late afternoon the men returned with four big monkeys (which they had shot with bows and arrows containing poisonous tips) and even larger turtle. The monkeys were thrown on the fire right away. . . . Actually, the meat was delicious. They showed us how to eat it with lemon, dried manioc and salt. They were as curious about our food as we were about theirs. They couldn't believe our bottle[d] transparent liquid was the same liquid they gather from the river. Extensive tasting sessions convinced them. The macaroni we shared with them didn't generate in them the same delighted and savory responses that their monkey did in us. They covered the pasta with an inch of Parmesan cheese before they even pulled a bite."

The group shuttled back and forth from the outdoors adventure mode to the more traditional one of Harvard Business School Internet experts with an ease that sometimes mimicked Clark Kent's famous telephone booth changes into Superman.

When they visited Victor Silhy (HBS '97) in San Salvador to give a 3 p.m. corporate Internet Seminar at the Silhy family pharmaceutical company headquarters, they found their arrival delayed by border crossings and road construction between Guatemala and El Salvador.

"We pulled into Victor's compound at ten minutes to three," the group recounts.

"We rushed to the washrooms, cleaned our faces and arms, put on our somewhat rumpled suits, plugged in the computers and projectors and we were ready to roll."

The Internet seminars and the road adventures were interspersed with visits to the schools that Expedition for Education had funded.

"The best days of the trip were the days we were received by the children at the schools," said González-Quattrini. "I think all of us reinforced our vocation for service by interacting with these children. It was very, very touching. The trip was nice, but the visits to the schools were my payback.

"The experience made me realize how privileged we are and how much stuff we can do," he continued. "You don't have to have a 5,000-employee company to rally behind an idea that has a social context. We discovered how much we could accomplish as a small group. It's really powerful. We're talking about infrastructure, seven schools that will benefit dozens of kids each. Hopefully, this project could become a Harvard tradition."

This article was published in the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies News, Fall 1997.

 

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Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College