For decades, Carnegie Mellon University has supported alternative spring break opportunities for servant leadership. Student Leadership, Involvement and Civic Engagement (SLICE) helps Tartans travel around the world to lend their skills to communities with limited resources.
Kaycee Palko, senior coordinator of student activities at SLICE, said students typically spend the entire academic year preparing for these service trips, starting with fundraising in the fall and working through a training curriculum that includes topics such as cultural competency, voluntourism and reflection in the lead up to their trip. This year, due to the pandemic, volunteering will look a little different.
"Our students are still motivated to find a way to make a difference," Palko said.
Global Brigades, the international nonprofit that often supports these trips, found a solution for students determined to make a difference in 2021.
Three groups of CMU undergraduate students partnered with Global Brigades to offer remote business, medical and public health service to communities throughout Central America, staggered throughout the spring semester.
"Our students are still motivated to find a way to make a difference." — Kaycee Palko
"It's very telling that in this switch to remote operations, our students didn’t give up," Palko said. "Sometimes the students feel like you have to be there in order to make a difference. We are really hoping to expand that perspective and help students learn it's not just about stepping down onto the ground in another location."
Good Business
Sean Gao, a senior with double majors in statistics and business administration, and Carrie Stewart, a junior in social decision sciences and business administration, co-led the virtual business brigade this year. Both students experienced in-person travel to Ghana in previous years, consulting with a cassava processing plant to help solve business and logistics challenges.
"That experience was truly incredible," Gao said. "Being able to go in and really experience a different country's culture … I personally haven't experienced anything outside of ours. And it was really meaningful being able to apply what we learned here at Tepper."
Gao and Stewart decided last May to plan a virtual global brigade experience for 2021. They knew the CMU calendar did not include a week of spring break, so the pair selected a service experience they could complete in January over winter break instead.
"We were actually able to do more of the business side of the service during the virtual project," Stewart said. "At home we have access to Excel and Google which gives us the ability to look up information for the clients. I think we could offer them a really great business workshop."
The business brigade students divided themselves into small groups, and each met virtually with a small business to listen to business plans and discuss challenges. The students then met to plan solutions and presented these to partners in Panama.
Global Brigades partners with Kiva, an organization that provides crowdfunded small business loans. The CMU students also helped their clients create presentations to secure Kiva loans.
Gao's group supported a small computer and printing cafe called Betsy's Copies.
"She needed a finance tracker to chart inflows and outflows of cash," Gao said. "She didn't have an expense tracking sheet so she had no way of knowing how much profit her business was actually making."
Gao's team created an Excel spreadsheet for the owner and designed a logo that could serve as a virtual business card.
"In Panama, most people use WhatsApp as their primary way of communicating, so a virtual business card she could send through that app would be really, really helpful," Gao said.
Many people in rural Panama rely on kiosks to purchase basic foods. CMU students supported a kiosk owner in creating an inventory tracking system for her business.
Stewart's team supported a kiosk owner. Stewart said, "Many people in Panama don't have access to big grocery stores, or don't have cars, so they rely on these kiosks for milk, sugar, eggs, and our partner also sells meat that her husband raises and butchers."
Stewart and her teammates helped create an inventory tracking system for their business partner. "She wanted to purchase a bigger freezer to store more meat, so we helped her calculate which type of loan would be most appropriate based on her profit margins," said Stewart.