In impoverished countries like the Central African Republic, micro-enterprise development is one of the most effective vehicles for spiritual, social, and economic transformation. During June 2006, John Terrill, Director for InterVarsity’s Professional Schools Ministries, and Al Erisman, Director for the Center of Integrity in Business at Seattle Pacific University, led an exploratory MBA missions project to the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) to help a ministry better understand the climate for enterprise development and to help it shape its micro-enterprise initiatives.
Other team members included Francis Friend, InterVarsity’s Urbana Operations Manager; Susan Tseng, InterVarsity graduate from Harvard Business School, now working in the healthcare industry in New York City; and Ilka Montross, a 2006 graduate from Vanderbilt University’s (Owen School of Management) MBA program.
Our team partnered with Integrated Community Development International (ICDI), a ministry focused on water-well drilling, orphan care, AIDS education and prevention, Christian educational radio broadcasting, and micro-enterprise development (MED).
We interviewed approximately 140 individuals working in business, education (including the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students group at Bangui University), government, non-government organizations (NGOs), and the church. Our team also met and interviewed villagers and village leaders to understand the unique economic challenges of village life. The final product of all of this research will be an economic assessment of the country and recommendations for next steps for ICDI in the development of its MED program.
We also assessed whether work in the C.A.R. could be a viable long-term project for future InterVarsity teams, especially groups of MBA students, graduates, and faculty. We believe it does, and we are tentatively planning to send a team during June 2007.
These kinds of projects, which utilize the unique skills, experiences, and training of business practitioners, are part of a larger, growing movement called Business-As-Mission (BAM). Given the forces of globalization in the world, the BAM movement seeks to harness the unique opportunities available to business practitioners for holistic transformation in the lives of people, institutions, and countries around the world. The Open for Business track offered at Urbana 06 is specifically geared to explore such possibilities.
Read an extended version of this story at InterVarsity’s Graduate Faculty Ministry website. Mission Network News story on Business-As-Mission.
Photo, Left to Right: John Terrill, Susan Tseng, Ilka Montross, Al Erisman, Francis Friend
