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Fourteen MBA students of first and second year are at present voluntarily dedicating part of their time to Social Entrepreneurship Consulting in the Raval district of Barcelona and also in Badalona (Estel Tapia, Dona Kolors, Mansol Projectes), as well as supporting youth integration NGOs in Raval (Braval and Terral).

Rocío Franco is a Peruvian first year MBA student who spends two hours a week as a volunteer in Terral. Terral is an activity center in the Raval neighborhood which is aimed at providing social and educational support for young girls and women -mostly immigrants- by providing resources that facilitate employment as well as developing their integration. This is their experience at the school:

“On my first day at Terral I was so excited! When I arrived I got the feeling that it was difficult for the girls (mostly around 14-15 years old) to ask for help, so I sat beside one of them, and asked her if she could tell me what she was doing. She started to talk and talk about her science assignment and she also started telling me about her life. Her name is Patricia, her family is from the Philippines but she was born here in Spain. She is 14 years old and speaks 5 languages (Philippine, English, Spanish, Catalan and French). She loves to learn new languages and she is now a high school junior. She dreams with studying at Harvard or Oxford. She is a very confident girl and I’m pretty sure that she will get what she wants.”

“What we do in Terral is help these girls with their everyday assignments, which is not always easy. Sometimes it can be hard for them to accept your help. Almost all of them are immigrants that live in the Raval in dysfunctional families. We invite you to go with us and help these girls. Just 2 hours per week is enough and the gratification is huge.”

IESE is very proud at the fact that four of these student volunteers, Rocío Franco, Maysaa Munaf, Bhavna Sakhrani and Ana Márquez also represent IESE Business School in the regional finals of the seventh annual Hult Prize. The Hult Prize is the world’s largest student competition, competing for up to USD 1 million prize for a start-up platform for social causes. In partnership with President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, the innovative crowdsourcing platform identifies and launches disruptive and catalytic social ventures that aim to solve the planet’s most pressing challenges. Student teams compete in six cities around the world for a chance to secure USD 1 million in start-up funding to launch a social sustainable venture.

At IESE we give them our full support and we wish them best of luck in the project they will be defending in London in March.

In fact, we encourage anyone who wants to contribute with a spirit of service in such social projects to contact me.