Business college combines MBA skills and missions in Honduras
Janel Shoun-Smith |
College of Business hosted its first combined business and missions trip this past summer
Each year, Lipscomb University sends more than 600 people to carry out mission work in locales around the globe. And each year Lipscomb’s College of Business sends around 120 students to international spots such as China, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Germany and Singapore to learn about business success in a global environment.
This past summer, College of Business professors decided it was about time to accomplish both those valuable goals together in one trip.
Five graduate business students traveled to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in July to learn about business in the Latino world and to also bring business advice and expertise to Jovenes en Camino, a boys’ home in Zamorano that tends to the needs of orphaned, abandoned and abused children in Honduras. Jovenes was founded by Lipscomb Director of Spiritual Outreach Steve Davidson.
Working through College of Business alumna, Annie Brown, office manager at Jovenes, the current students provided some long-term marketing strategies for the organization to engage American donors, as well as ideas on how the organization can use its facilities to become more self-sustaining, said Allison Duke, College of Business associate dean and trip coordinator.
“I heard about a graduate business student who chose to attend a Lipscomb mission trip, and I started thinking about how we could get more of our graduate students involved in missions,” said Duke. “I realized that to provide effective and meaningful management advice for any foreign-based company, the student would have to see how business works in that country, so the trip would have to be a hybrid of business education and spiritual mission.”
The students—Traci Barton, Chuck Yoest, Frankie Giovetti, Marla Lamont and Brooke Smotherman—spent the first part of the trip learning about business management in Honduras, visiting Spectrum Brand’s (Ray-O-Vac, Remington) warehouse and offices, local retail establishments from a mall to a neighborhood bodega, a law office, two local universities and Fundación José María Covelo, an organization that funds entrepreneurial ventures through micro-loans.
The tours made it clear to students that “when you are thinking about moving your operation into a Latin American country, it’s a completely different business model,” said Duke.
Honduran cities are full of small neighborhood shops, run out of people’s homes. These shops don’t need a lot of product at one time and are often located on sites that can be difficult to travel to in a large vehicle, Duke said. It all makes delivery of products very different from American big box stores, she said.
And that is just one of the differences. A visit to El Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica’s chief risk officer revealed how foreign companies locating in Honduras often must allocate risk management resources to deal with the nation’s image problem.
“What impressed me about our hosts at these companies was their willingness to speak candidly about problems and issues they faced as a nation,” said Barton, the office manager at the Lipscomb Family Therapy Center and an MBA student from Franklin, Tenn. “They spoke bluntly about crime, corruption, poverty and perceptions of Honduras, but finished by explaining all the reasons they loved and were proud of their country. No one tried to gloss over issues we all knew existed, but all wanted to make sure we did not miss the many positives about life in such a country of beauty and history and family-culture.”
Students also visited programs supported by Child Fund, an organization that provides support for infant health care, children’s education and youth workforce development. Part of the visit with Child Fund involved a presentation by local families featuring products they had been trained to produce and sell including crops, coffee beans and woodwork. They asked Lipscomb students to help them develop a marketing strategy for distributing their products beyond their small community.
“It got our students thinking about the distribution channels they learned about at Spectrum Brands and how a community could partner with existing businesses to enhance its economic viability,” said Duke.
And all those experiences fueled the group’s recommendations for Jovenes. They recognized that bilingual and vocational education was critical for the boys’ future, suggesting that unused classroom space be used for visiting volunteers to teach new trades. Students also recommended a partnership with Lipscomb’s College of Education to establish a bilingual school staffed by education graduates. Finally, they advocated having interns (usually American students) coordinate social media campaigns in America to increase their donor base.