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Do you want to be an international volunteer for inclusive market projects?

The collaboration between Social Alumni and SUD, acting as a giving-back consultancy abroad, highlights the approach that ESADE believes cooperation projects involving professionals must have: impact on the project receiving advice, which is most advisable, plus impact on the person providing the advice:

  • Impact on the project thanks to the participation of former students with a great deal of professional experience, combining on-site work with remote work in impoverished countries.
  • Impact on people thanks to a training programme for students in their final year taking part in this project, with a view to fostering the value of giving back and being in contact with (in many respects) a wealthy and unfair world by practicing one’s profession.

In these projects, senior alumni interact with current students. The former students move out first, provide consultancy sessions on site and then return after pinpointing actions in which students on the SUD programme can subsequently implement their practices.

During their stay, these students receive distance tutorials from participating alumni using new technologies. We aim for long-term collaboration and engagement to ensure sustainable companies, mainly cooperatives, as an inclusive project.

  • Two- or three-week trip to the site. Consultancy work on site. Pinpointing work opportunities for students, analysis of potential and activities to improve future organisation.
  • Distance tutoring for students who travel out subsequently.
  • Involvement for at least two years on project follow-up. Twice-monthly Skype meetings to monitor evolution and give advice on how to achieve goals.

- We are looking for alumni with experience in their own company, start-up, family firm or enterprise.
- With experience in developing countries and used to travelling
- People with a sense of social responsibility, awareness, empathy and commitment.
- People able to solve problems at work, versatile, multidisciplinary and decisive.
- Flexible and adaptable.

Available projects

GIE Experna is a social enterprise created in 2007 that promotes the role of women in Senegal. The project, carried out in the small, disadvantaged town of Goudiry in Senegal, was the result of collaboration between Oxfam Intermón and the Esade team. Its objective was to carry out a strategic diagnosis that would help GIE Experna to plan for the future and increase its production capacity.

The main objective of the project is to create wealth in a disadvantaged region through agroforestry work centred on cultivating and replanting baobab trees.

Other (no less important) objectives pursued by GIE Experna include:

- Helping to create jobs, especially for women.

- Raising the income level of women and young harvesters.

- Training women in leadership, investment and entrepreneurship.

The Centre for Studies and Social Action (CEAS) is an organisation that encompasses various social projects, including cocoa cooperatives led by the association Dois Riachões. Specifically, 82 farmers in five settlements are already directly involved in the project, including around 30 women. The project could potentially benefit another 300 farmers based in agrarian reform areas. The total number of beneficiary families could therefore reach 442 – a total of 2,210 people. The main economic activity of most of these families is agriculture.

The aim of the project is to replace the exclusionary production model that has existed in the south of Bahia for more than 150 years – and still survives in the settlements – with an ecologically friendly agricultural model that promotes social and environmental development centred on the families of the settlements and the farmers who work the land. The ultimate goal is to control the entire economic cycle of this crop, including the production of high-quality organic cocoa, mucilage, nibs, chocolate and other derivatives.

An SRL company based in Mizque, Cochabamba, Bolivia which will receive aid from Intermón Oxfam and has a lot of potential to help small peanut producers increase their sales and ensure steady income. The company has a regular customer in Germany which guarantees volume. The main problem is cash flow due to production times and reliance on intermediaries. The collaboration will focus on:

- Helping define the 2018 cash flow, particularly during the peanut buying and selling period from April to July.

- Diagnosing the internal management (currently very amateur) and suggesting improvements. The manager is a one-man band. He needs help in organising processes and delegating.

- Defining a new sales policy including a consumer goods retail channel.

This programme was created in 2014 to foster the development of SMEs in developing countries. The focal point of the program is rural companies at the start-up phase with the potential to make a big impact in combating the poverty of small rural producers. The collaboration will focus on:

- Providing knowledge in the form of strategies to increase the customer portfolio.

- Helping improve the organisation to ensure more effective management control

- Helping pinpoint synergies and drawing up an action plan between the different associations of soybean producers.

Fundación Suyusama es la iniciativa de Grupos de Ahorro y crédito Autogestionado – GAAC- la cual se inició en el año 2012. Concretamente son grupos rurales de personas, quienes ahorran en conjunto y toman pequeños prestamos de esos ahorros con el objetivo de:

- Crear lazos de solidaridad y vecindad entre las comunidades rurales.
- Cimentar la cultura del ahorro y su función en el mejoramiento de las condiciones de vida de familias rurales.
- Construir un sistema comunitario, solidario y alternativo para acceder al microcrédito.
- Generar alternativas de financiación a las necesidades y emprendimientos desde las propias familias y comunidades.
- Promover la economía solidaria como mecanismo de desarrollo de la ruralidad. Estrategia general y económico-financiera de una empresa de frutas y verduras.

Los consultores del proyecto Together estudian el diseño de modelos de negocio sostenibles y pertinentes al entorno y dinámica socioeconómica y cultural de las familias campesinas e indígenas acompañadas con el objetivo de crear un modelo solidario de negocio que fortalezcan los circuitos económicos locales y potencie la capacidad y oportunidades locales. Adicionalmente se analiza el mecanismo de ahorro y crédito más coherentes con la situación.

En 2007, con la ayuda de la Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID), se constituye en el Bañado Sur (Asunción) un Centro de Atención Familiar para dar apoyo a las 25.000 personas que viven en la zona en situación de pobreza o pobreza extrema. CATEURA nace en 2018 con el objetivo de comercializar la artesanía elaborada por las mujeres del Bañado Sur a partir de materiales reciclados (en su mayoría provenientes del vertedero municipal, ubicado en el mismo barrio).

La colaboración se centra en:
•    Dotar a las mujeres artesanas de las habilidades y de los conocimientos empresariales necesarios para el desarrollo de su actividad, y conseguir así su independencia económica y su empoderamiento.
•    Definir el producto, la cadena de suministro y la estrategia de comercialización adecuadas.
•    Asistir en la detección de sinergias y colaboraciones con otros agentes del sector (diseñadores, ferias, etc.).

Madre Tierra es una Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, cuyos propietarios son dos asociaciones de pequeños productores. Ofrece pulpa congelada y otros derivados a base de asaí y copoazú, frutos tropicales, autóctonos y ecológicos con una alta demanda en el mercado. Madre Tierra es una empresa madura con potencial para ofrecer unos medios de vida sostenibles para 300 familias productoras. Su modelo es totalmente medioambientalmente sostenible. Usan los Sistemas Agroforestales destinados a luchar contra la deforestación y dependencia a la explotación maderera de la región. 

-La empresa tiene unos objetivos sociales y medioambientales definidos. Sin embargo, uno de sus mayores desafíos sigue siendo el acceso a una logística adecuada que permita transportar su producción a un buen coste.

-El programa se centrará en el fortalecimiento en comercialización de pulpa de frutas exóticas (asaí y copoazú).

Desde 2018, la emprendedora Maria Rosa Chuquima está apostando por la inclusión en cada eslabón de la cadena de valor. Esta ambiciosa agrónoma fundó junto a su esposo “El huerto” con el fin de responder a una demanda no saciada de semillas y plantines de hortalizas para producción en la zona andina de Bolivia, y ofrecer insumos de mejor calidad de los que se encuentran en el mercado (importados y de contrabando).

-El programa conjunto con Oxfam permitirá profesionalizar la empresa, disponer de una estrategia específica para trabajar con los productores de hortalizas más vulnerables e incorporar a mujeres en la empresa como empleadas y colaboradoras.

- Mejora de las capacidades técnicas de producción, comercialización y finanzas internas en el sector de horticultura y semillas. 

Together

ESADE Alumni Giving-Back and ESADE SUD have joined forces in several projects in developing countries designed to generate productive activities