When fourth year International Affairs and Economics major Rob Gulick contacted TechnoServe for an international co-op experience, he was hard pressed to find opportunities for undergraduates at the lucrative social enterprise based in Washington D.C. However, when TechnoServe’s country director in Guatemala responded with an invitation, Rob jumped at the opportunity.
TechnoServe is an international social enterprise with the mission of empowering entrepreneurs in developing countries by assisting in small business development, primarily across the agriculture, agribusiness, tourism, and alternative energy sectors. It is a highly impactful organization with global reach, operating in over twenty countries. Rob first learned about TechnoServe as a student in Professor Shaughnessy’s social entrepreneurship course. The organization routinely recruits management consultants from the business sector to work for its volunteer consulting program. Prior to his co-op at TechnoServe, Rob’s co-op experience came from the private sector as he interned at Aperian Global, a consulting firm which specializes in international talent development.
Currently based in Guatemala City, Rob balances his time both in the office and in the field in order to have a comprehensive view of each program to better assist the organization in the coming weeks. Rob is being exposed to different aspects of TechnoServe’s work, from monitoring the utilization of fertilizer on a pea farm in Cunén to finding a more reliable electricity source for a coffee plantation in Pochuta.
The conditions of the communities in which he works have made a strong impact on him. “Guatemala City is home to the largest, most toxic and dangerous landfill in all of Central America. The thousands of families that live in and around the dump have become known as guajeros. They are living in extreme poverty making a living off collecting food and items from the dump. It is truly heart wrenching,” says Rob.
Fortunately, TechnoServe is working to improve the livelihood of the guajeros in the landfill through a partnership with Eco-Creativas, a small business in which local women collect, wash, and sort plastic bags from the dump and turn them into items such as purses, wallets, and hotplates that can be sold in the city. Rob’s role in this project consists of working with the program manager of Eco-Creativas to locate a long-term, sustainable buyer for Eco-Creativas’s inventory.
Rob’s daily responsibilities will shift in February with the arrival of a researcher from the University of Colorado at Boulder who seeks to find the optimal combination of different waste materials to use in bio fuel briquettes. “I will be supplementing his research by determining the successful briquette’s feasibility, cost, length of burn, and anything else that TechnoServe will need to know in order to implement them into a program.” Rob also plans to volunteer at a local orphanage called “La Luz de Maria” during his free time.
Rob’s interest in sustainable development began in high school during a trip to a UNICEF site in Swaziland with Rotary International. This past summer, Rob returned from the Social Enterprise Institute’s South Africa Field Study Program where he worked as a consultant to help build a local entrepreneur’s business. Rob created his own cooperative education experience and was awarded funding through the University’s Global Scholar program and the Social Enterprise Institute’s SE Co-op Award.
Although Gulick’s co-op with TechnoServe is his first in-depth exposure to Latin America, Rob believes that he has found a common denominator amongst all people considered the bottom billion from his travels to Swaziland and South Africa. “People living in poverty, especially extreme poverty, are the most resilient, determined, and inspiring people you will ever encounter anywhere in the world,” says Rob.
