Students in an Elon Core Curriculum capstone course led by faculty members in the Martha & Spencer Love School of Business and Elon College, the College of Arts & Sciences, spent eight days in Peru sharing with farmers ideas to improve their land while growing their revenues.
By Sarah Mulnick ’17
Seven Elon University upperclassmen visited Peru this Winter Term in a pilot program that incorporated elements of microfinance and sustainable agriculture to help coffee farmers protect their lands while improving their economic conditions.
The course, “Sustainable Development: Microfinance & Agriculture in Peru,” partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation to explore a new microfinance program that would provide low-interest loans to coffee farmers that grow their crops under the rainforest canopy. These loans would be administered through a local farmer-owned co-op in Peru.
The arrangement would allow for higher returns for the farmers, and it would ensure that the land is bettered through improved education about the impact of typical coffee-farming methods on the environment.
Students in the Elon Core Curriculum capstone course consulted with the farmers and offered suggestions for improvements in household agricultural production techniques as well the benefits of microfinance loans.
The course is one of the first Elon classes to feature an “embedded” study abroad component. Students spent the first two weeks of Winter Term on campus before traveling to Peru for eight days.
The students presented what they had learned from the experience on Jan. 27 to a group that included representatives from the Arbor Day Foundation, the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, El Centro de Español and the Isabella Cannon Global Education Center.
“This was a unique opportunity for faculty from different colleges and departments to work together,” said Assistant Professor Chris Harris, a faculty member in the Department of Finance who accompanied the class to Peru with Assistant Professor Andrew Greenland in the Department of Economics.
Also involved in the class was Steve Moore, a faculty member in the Department of Environmental Studies who taught extensively prior to the students’ departure to South America. Moore’s involvement through Elon College, the College of Arts & Sciences, was part of a collaboration between the two schools.
The students who visited Peru:
Katie Fitzgerald
Danae MacLeod
Julia Greatrex
Michael O’Brien
Luke Raffa
Spencer Tiedge
Robert Sciarrone