McPherson College students learn life lessons on Haiti trip – Kansas City Star

By MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS

The Kansas City Star

Some McPherson College students went to Haiti this summer with a grand idea that they believed would be life-changing for poor residents there.

Instead, they came home changed.

The five students thought they would go to Haiti and present people on Tortuga Island with their entrepreneurial idea for a local marketplace that might eventually go global via the Internet.

The reality was that the islanders had no Internet. And they were more focused on drinking water.

Starting a business wasn’t even on their radar.

It’s a lesson being learned a lot more these days with so many more young Americans journeying abroad for humanitarian reasons.

More than a million Americans a year travel abroad as volunteers to lend a hand in poor communities, according to a study on international volunteerism by Washington University School of Social Work.

They go with schools, mission groups and nonprofit organizations. Many go with their save-the-world dreams during alternative spring breaks.

“Within the realm of the college alternative spring break trip, it happens pretty frequently, that students go with the mentality of saving and fixing,” said Emily Pearce, a senior at University of Virginia and president of Alternative Spring Break there.

“It is easy to fall into: ‘I’m an American. I’m able to provide something that you don’t have,’ ” said Pearce, who herself has done a lot of travel, to impoverished parts of East Africa in particular.

But she said her spring break group encourages students to do service learning training before heading off with a notion to teach, fix or save.

“The hope of the traveler ideally should be much more of a learning mentality, an exchange of ideas. What matters is not what you do for a week,” she said. “What does matter is that you come home having changed your daily perspective about life.”

The McPherson students’ idea sounded good, lucrative and filled with good intention.

They called it “Beyond Isles” — a community market that would start with an actual market for agricultural and clothing products, expand to a virtual global market through Internet portals, and later add an educational component for the islanders to continue skill development.

The plan was hatched in November 2010 as part of a contest by the college to get students to create a sustainable business plan they could implement in Haiti if given the chance.

With Haiti just 11 months past a devastating earthquake that had attracted volunteers and aid from all over the world, the idea of lending a hand there intrigued McPherson students.

Some 30 students signed up for the venture competition. Four ended up on a team with Tori Carder from Eudora, Kan.

Carder’s team turned in the winning plan and on May 30 left to spend six days in Haiti.

Kent Eaton, McPherson College provost, said what he hoped would come out of the trip was that his school would develop a “partnership with and help the people of Tortuga.” The student’s venture concept was less of a priority.

On the ground in Haiti, Carder said, “things changed. The global market idea was not going to work because there was no Internet.”

What the villagers needed was a bigger pond to collect more rain water. And they had already started building it.

“They wanted us to help with that,” Carder said. So instead of setting up a global Internet market, the McPherson students jumped into the mud and joined the bucket brigade that the villagers had created to dig their pond.

“A big part of entrepreneurial education is that sometimes things don’t go as planned,” said Adam Pracht, McPherson spokesman.

“It is what you do with that that really counts,” he said. “Really the only failure is a failure to learn. And definitely from that standpoint, the Haiti trip was by no means a failure. It transformed their lives.”

“Really it just makes you appreciate what you have so much more than when you left,” said Carder, 20. “It makes your realize how fortunate you are to have running water. It opens your eyes and the eyes of those around you.”

To reach Mará Rose Williams, call 816-234-4419 or send email to mdwilliams@kcstar.com.