WIVP: Wharton's spirit of volunteerism

By: Paulami Kar, WG'04

Posted: 3/24/03

Planning a vacation in China this summer? Or, maybe you’re thinking of visiting exotic locales such as Morocco or Panama. Well, a group of Wharton students is busily organizing trips to these, and other, countries around the world, but ours is truly an expedition with a difference!

For example, in Panama, you will find these Wharton students not at the usual tourist attractions but at the crafts store in Portobelo, a historic district that dates back to Columbus. Wharton International Volunteer Project members will be partnering with a local NGO for three weeks in May to design a marketing strategy for the handicrafts of the area, a mainstay of the 500-odd population of the district. In August, there will be yet another trip to the country, and this time, the Wharton group will be helping an NGO to train impoverished women in vocational skills and to provide support through legal assistance and micro-credit.

Or, if you’re in China, you may find fellow classmates in Shanghai, running an AIDS education workshop for local university students. Discussing AIDS is tricky business in China, so Wharton students will be called upon to use their ingenuity as well as games and role playing to increase awareness and educate the youth to prevent HIV infection. Another group of students will be traveling to Brazil to help children infected with HIV and work with an NGO that provides 150 kids with access to medical aid.

Just in case you’re still wondering what the Wharton International Volunteer Project is, (even after all the fun you had at the Winter Ball), let me briefly introduce this unique Wharton community to you. In existence for eighteen years, the Wharton International Volunteer Project, or WIVP for short, is a non-profit, student-run initiative that utilizes the business skills of Wharton MBA students to further the cause of social welfare in developing countries. Wharton students work pro bono with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and travel to developing countries around the world to work on a variety of economic and social development projects over the summer.

Last year, nine projects were undertaken in eight countries: Bangladesh, Botswana, Chile, Ivory Coast, Mongolia, Mexico, Tanzania and Vietnam. While the themes varied from micro-credit financing, sustainable ecotourism, empowerment of self-employed women, and AIDS education, the projects were united in the level of commitment required from the members and the value of their recommendations to the ‘client’ NGOs.

In the summer of 2003, the Wharton International Volunteer Program will be undertaking twelve projects in eleven countries: Cameroon, China, Brazil, India, Morocco, Nepal, Panama, Peru, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania. Wharton students will be working on a variety of topics, ranging from ecological conservation to education of women and children. Some of the projects deal with especially challenging issues, such as helping to highlight and improve the human rights situation in Tibet and promote democracy for the Tibetan people. A group of WIVP members will be partnering with an NGO, based in Nepal and India, which researches and reports on human rights issues, lobbies with international agencies and helps educate Tibetans in exile from their homeland. Using the business skills learned at Wharton, the group will be working on financial and strategic planning for the NGO, and will be involved in the nitty-gritty of the NGO’s operations over the course of the two-week project.

Africa has always been an area of focus for WIVP, and this year is no exception. In southern Morocco, Wharton students will be found working with cooperatives that employ rural women involved in the extraction of oil from the Argan tree. The group will cover a range of business planning activities, from designing strategic marketing plans for the export of the oil to developing accounting and purchasing systems for two such cooperatives. Trees are also at the center-stage of another project, in South Africa, where WIVP members will be partnering with an organization that promotes tree planting and environmental conservation. In Rwanda, the WIVP group will work with an organization that provides technical and financial assistance to small entrepreneurs, and helps them in their business plan development. Wharton students will train the trainers in business management, with the objective of creating a large training force for the NGO. Benin is the location for not one but two projects, both focusing on the utilization of information technology to enhance productivity, one helping an organization for agricultural producers and the other focusing on microfinance and food security in villages. And in Tanzania, WIVP members will be working to develop entrepreneurship training programs, holding workshops and providing assistance to local entrepreneurs.

Wharton students have established a tradition of giving back to the community through different initiatives on and off campus, and in the true Wharton spirit, WIVP members carry the torch of social development to different countries around the world. And, again in the true Wharton spirit, they have a blast!