Service Learning Initiative: Guatemala Trip : Center for Social Innovation (CSI)

Social Entrepreneurship and the Coffee Supply Chain

Trip Description
From Past Trips

[photo - service learning trip to Guatemala]

The Guatemala trip provides a deep dive into the coffee supply chain, as you experience the industry’s impact on communities and the environment from seed to a cup of freshly roasted beans.

Using coffee as a lens, this trip challenges preconceived ideas and prompts questions about the complex interdependencies of business, nonprofit, and government sectors. It touches on economic development and environmental sustainability challenges and explores innovative models of social entrepreneurship, informing student insights as consumers and future management leaders.

The Guatemala trip casts a steaming mug of coffee, the role of coffee drinkers, and the power of demand in a very new light—connected to the land and the people who make each cup possible.

Please note: this trip will not be offered for credit toward the Service Learning Initiative in 2011-2012. To find out more about the Guatemala Trip, however, please contact the Public Management Program.

Trip highlights

Pick coffee alongside former civil war guerilla fighters on a fair-trade, organic coffee cooperative.
Explore innovative farming practices, and certification standards through farm visits and discussions with producers and exporters.
Work alongside farmers at As Green As It Gets to construct needed coffee-processing infrastructure.
Meet with ANACAFE to discuss branding, promotion, and coffee education efforts in Guatemala and abroad.

Faculty Advisor

Rick Aubry, Lecturer in Management
Work focus: Rick Aubry has led one of America’s leading social enterprises, Rubicon Programs, for over 20 years. His work at the GSB focuses on social entrepreneurship to effect positive social change throughout the world.

What did we learn during past trips?

January 2009

In year three of our trip to Guatemala, students met with representatives from government, nonprofit and business sectors in an examination of the coffee supply chain. The group was accompanied by Professor Evan Porteus, a lecturer in Stanford’s School of Education. Trip highlights included a two-night stay at the Santa Anita Coffee Cooperative, where the team met former leftist guerillas turned coffee farmers on the twelfth anniversary of the Guatemalan Peace Accords and the visit of a loquat farm that shed light about the role of technical assistance providers and exporters in the supply chain for agricultural products in general. With partner organization As Green As It Gets, students worked with local farmers to build coffee fermenting tanks and a bamboo and wire fence around the new coffee drying patio; both of these service projects will help AGAIG farmers capture more value for their processed coffee.

January 2008

With Evan Porteus, Professor of Management Science, traveling with the group and providing insight from his research on supply chains, the 2008 trip highlighted the complexity of the coffee supply chain and raised questions far beyond coffee:

What’s in Your Cup?, feature article in Stanford Business Magazine by Blyth Yee, MBA '09

Day by day activities on the trip blog

January 2007

In 2007, students discovered the challenges of creating value at each step of the coffee supply chain. The group was accompanied by Professor of Organizational Behavior Jesper B. Sorensen, who specializes in the dynamics of organizational and strategic change, and their implications for individuals and their careers.

Picking Coffee: New Learnings Percolate by Steven Riskey, MBA '08 in The Stanford Business Reporter

Short film by Jonathan Bolden, MBA '08

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