|
Wharton Students
Consult on
Sustainable
Industry for
Peruvian
Rainforest
Building a product distribution
network in the
rainforest is hard enough. It
doesn't get any easier when
the only bridge into town is
washed out.
This was just one of
the challenges faced by six
members of the Wharton
Global Consulting
Practicum (GCP) during a
recent trip to Peru's Palcazu
Valley. There, the students
met the indigenous Yanesha
people, a growing community
of artisans working to
build a sustainable lifestyle
in the rainforest.
In January 2005, the GCP
team traveled to Lima, Peru,
and its surrounding rainforest
to consult for the nonprofit
Partnerships and Technology
for Sustainability (PaTS).
PaTS aims to preserve the
forests of the Palcazu Valley
by creating sustainable industry
for the indigenous
Yanesha people who call the
valley their home.
The group teaches the
Yanesha to use the rainforest—their most abundant
natural resource—to create
furniture, housewares and
accessories. It's a far cry from
just a few years ago, when the
Yanesha lived as subsistence
farmers and sold off their
trees to logging companies.
"Now not only are they
able to sustain the forest,"
reported trip participant
Lisa Linn de Barona, "but
they're able to send their
children to school, invest in
community buildings, and
do all kinds of things they
couldn't do before."
The team spent nine
days in Peru, meeting the
Yanesha artisans and their
families and studying how
they made and distributed
their product. These experiences
helped them understand
firsthand the obstacles
— especially the difficulties
of travel in the Palcazu
valley—that the Yanesha
must overcome to build and
ship their product.
Now back in the States,
the students have to find
new ways of getting the
Yanesha goods into stores,
translating the artisans'
craftsmanship into a marketable
brand.
In the Wharton Global
Consulting Practicum,
Wharton MBA candidates
engage with the real world of
consulting for international
companies. The companies
gain a North American business
plan, and the students
learn valuable lessons about
creating and implementing a
business strategy.
|
