Becoming a Social Entrepreneur

Through a summer internship with Social Entrepreneurship Corps (SEC), Ashley Post was exposed to the world of global business, taught local children, and empowered women to become entrepreneurs.

Social Entrepreneurship

This summer, I was fortunate enough to go to Guatemala with Social Entrepreneurship Corps (SEC). This non-profit company was started by two Peace Corps alums looking to help generate a sustainable business environment for impoverished people in Guatemala. SEC works with Community Enterprise Solutions (CES) to empower Guatemalan women as entrepreneurs through the MicroConsignment Model (MCM). Created by SEC co-founder Greg van Kirk, the MCM was designed as a bridge between donations and micro-credit.

In this model, a company bears the financial risk and gives environmentally-friendly, healthful products to local women willing to make the time investment to sell the products. Over the course of a few months, CES trains these women in basic business skills. This provides them with the ability to hold campaigns in neighboring villages, where they sell products ranging from reading glasses to water filters to solar lamps.

While the women keep a portion of the profits, they return the rest to CES, who uses the money to purchase more products to train more women. As a student interested in development work, this model seemed to have a lot of potential. So I packed the biggest backpack I could find and headed down to Guatemala for a month!

A Month in Guatemala

During the first week of the internship, we spent the morning in intensive Spanish language sessions and the afternoon in development discussions. Our one-on-one Spanish teachers taught us about the culture, language, and business environment, while our development discussions prepared us for our field work. We stayed with incredible host families in Antigua, which further immersed us into the language and culture.

Some of the best moments from my trip were with my host family. Throughout the entire week I stayed with them, they really treated me like family. My host father twirled me around at the street fair as a famous Guatemalan band played, my host brother let me name his new puppy (because of my poor Spanish skills, the dog was named “Oso”, which means bear), my host sister taught me how to make tortillas, and my host mother helped me with my Spanish homework!

The next week our team of fifteen split in half and eight of us ventured to Nebaj, a rural town in the highlands of Guatemala. While in Nebaj, we stayed with host families and had a variety of jobs. The work we did ranged from asking locals about the challenges of owning a business to helping the entrepreneurs sell their products at campaigns to working at an educational center.

Soluciones Comunitarias, the Guatemalan partner to CES, funds “El Centro de la Pista.” This is a school that operates on the opposite schedule of the government’s half-day school so that children can attend school for a full day.

During our time at El Centro, we organized an “Earth Day” experience, teaching the children about environmental issues and organizing a trash clean-up parade through the town.

From Nebaj, we headed to Xela, the second largest city in Guatemala. In Xela, the eight of us lived in an apartment together, which helped facilitate work on our group project. We were responsible for creating a database of organizations and resources available to Guatemalans, including but not limited to educational, recreational, farming, and artisan support. During the days, we worked at campaigns, investigated the possibility of expanding our product lines, and surveyed more business owners about the challenges they faced. 

When we weren’t doing official business, we got to relax in the Hot Springs outside of Xela and had the opportunity to do an overnight climb of the tallest volcano in Central America!  At the end of the trip, we returned to Antigua to stay with our original host families and participated in wrap-up discussion and project presentations.

Highlights 

The best part of the program was not the things we did but the people I met.  From the founders of the program to the other interns to the Guatemalans I worked with, everyone was empathetic, friendly, and dedicated to improve our world in a sustainable way.

I cannot speak highly enough about the program and the people I had the opportunity to work with, who I will never forget. There was one woman, in her mid-forties, who came in for an eye exam at one of the campaigns. After we found the right prescription for her, she started crying, proclaiming she could finally work again!

I also really loved getting to spend time with the children at La Pista.  One little boy knew a few English phrases and repeated “Good Morning” about eighty times to each of the interns! One four-year-old girl who only spoke Ixil, the native Mayan language, clasped onto my hand at the beginning of the day and did not let go until it was time to leave. Despite the fact that our communication didn’t extend beyond “Como estas?”, we were able to spend the whole day smiling and laughing.

These are just a few of the moments that made the experience unforgettable for me. It introduced me to the world of global business and its tie-ins to economic development, and it was one of the best experiences of my life!