Thunderbird for Good

Afghan businesswoman Lima Ahmad wanted as much education as possible when she came to Thunderbird School of Global Management in 2006 as a Project Artemis fellow. She welcomed the two-week business course in Glendale, Arizona, but dreamed of earning a full degree.

Lima finally will get the chance when she arrives Aug. 15, 2010, as a full-time student at Bucknell Univeristy in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

“Even in 2006, she was talking about the need for more education,” said Erica (Haefner) Ferro ’97, a Project Artemis mentor who will meet Lima at the airport in Pennsylvania and help her move into her college dormitory.

Erica, an IBM business development manager in Colorado, has stayed in contact with Lima for four years, but the friends have not seen each other in person since their days together at Thunderbird.

Project Artemis mentors make a two-year commitment to work with their Afghan counterparts, but Erica decided to extend her relationship with Lima.

“I don’t think I ever will be done,” Erica said. “Lima and I have a great relationship, and I think we are hooked together for life.”

Lima came to Thunderbird with 14 other Afghan businesswomen in the second cohort of Project Artemis, a women’s empowerment program that Thunderbird launched in 2005. The third cohort came to campus in 2008, and a fourth group will arrive in October 2010.

Lima, who was 23 at the time, ran a clothing design and production company called Made in Afghanistan. When she returned to Kabul, she expanded the business and found other sources of income.

She also pursued a degree in international relations at the American University of Afghanistan, but the ongoing war in Afghanistan created interruptions.

“Every time there was a bomb or some sort of incident, the instructors would get pulled out,” Erica said. “This created long delays.”

Erica said her friend has shown a remarkable ability to reinvent her dreams and press forward regardless of the obstacles.

“She works and works until she gets what she wants,” Erica said. “She never gives up.”

Follow Lima’s blog, which she started in January 2010.

Thunderbird MBA student Emily Eckert, ‘11, is currently working as Reporting Officer Intern for FLAG International in Afghanistan. FLAG is a consulting company that provides technical and management consulting services for companies seeking to generate an above-average return on the capital of their owners and investors. You can read more about Emily’s work in Kabul here.

By: Wynona Heim, Program Manager, Afghanistan, Thunderbird for Good

The second annual 10,000 Women Leadership Academy brought more than 100 partners from 20 countries worldwide together in Washington, DC from June 6th – 9th, 2010. The entire Thunderbird for Good team was in attendance to represent the 10,000 Women programs that Thunderbird partners with in Afghanistan and Peru.

The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women business training program has provided entrepreneurial training to 2,000 women with high potential businesses or concepts for businesses in 20 developing economies in the first two years of the initiative.

Former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice addressed participants at a dinner held at the newly re-opened Smithsonian National Museum of American History, “On many occasions I’ve been asked, what’s the one thing you would do if you could wave a magic wand and make the world better? And I always come to one as central: I would empower women.”

We at Thunderbird for Good wholeheartedly agree! The significance of economically empowering women was evidenced by four 10,000 Women graduates who attended the conference as honored scholars from Brazil, Kenya, India, and our own graduate from the Afghan program, Masooma Habibi. Masooma spoke eloquently to the group. “Before I started 10,000 Women, I didn’t have a business, I just had a dream,” she said. “But 10,000 Women was like turning a switch. Everything changed. Now I have 22 employees.”

The academy was held over three days and included speaker sessions and interactive workshops that focused on the challenges partners faced in administering the initiative, as well as broader trends in empowering women in developing economies. Influential leaders in this area came together to speak to participants during the three day conference, including: Ambassador-at-large for Global Women’s issues Melanne Verveer, Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, President of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass, founder and CEO of Women for Women International Zainab Salbi, and more.

Thunderbird for Good and other program participants made maximum use of the opportunity to share best practices and insights gained from the first two years and 2,000 graduates of the initiative. However, we all agreed that the very best part of the Leadership Academy was the chance to finally put faces to names and get to know in person all of the colleagues that we had previously known primarily over phone and e-mail communications.

LIMA — About 300 Peruvian women with big dreams for their microenterprises crowded into a makeshift auditorium June 21, 2010, for the launch of Proyecto Salta, a three-hour business course developed at Thunderbird School of Global Management in partnership with local training company Aprenda.

“The audience was absolutely captivated,” said Thunderbird Professor Christine Pearson, Ph.D., a curriculum contributor who attended the launch. “The material seems to be just the right level.”

Aprenda instructors repeated the free course twice in different locations on June 22. Overall, the program will reach 100,000 micro-entrepreneurs all over Peru within four years.

Many program participants have microloans from Mibanco and other Peruvian banks, and the goal of Proyecto Salta is to link access to capital with access to education.

Funding partners for the program include the Australian Agency for International Development and the Multilateral Investment Fund of Inter-American Development Bank.
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What were you doing over Memorial Day weekend? If you’re a member of the T-bird rugby team, chances are you were down at the pitch. This past Saturday, members of the Thunderbird Rugby Club put on a rugby skills workshop for refugee children who’ve recently been resettled in Phoenix.

Approximately 15 kids from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Bhutan took part in the workshop, where they learned ball passing, kicking and teamwork skills. The day ended with a quick game of touch rugby, pizza and lots of Gatorade.

“Although I wasn’t sure how they would respond to a sport that many of them had never heard of, they all obviously had a great time,” said Gabriel Sanchez, a volunteer coordinator with Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, a group that helps with refugee resettlement in Phoenix. “On the ride home, my van was full of kids who kept telling me how much they liked the game and how much they wanted to continue playing it.”

Michael Milbank, president of the Thunderbird Rugby Club, organized the event so that the players could do something to give back to the community. He said that he anticipates the club will continue to take on more of these projects in the future, and possibly even organize a regular training program for the kids.

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When Thunderbird Professor Llewellyn Howell isn’t teaching, you’ll likely find him in uniform. Howell, an Emeritus Professor of International Management, is one of more than 110 local volunteers who dedicate their time– and skills– to the Glendale Police Department. Volunteers like him provide a valuable service to the city: last year, they contributed an estimated 22,500 hours or $450,000 worth of labor, according to the agency.

Howell first became aware of the program four years ago from his son, who is a detention officer for the city of Glendale. Since then Professor Howell has worked for the department about two hours each week, mainly doing fingerprinting.

“I wanted to take part in this because it’s a great way to contribute to the community where I live, but also because it’s a way to learn some interesting things,” he said. “I teach about police and law and order in my classes on political risk assessment. This gives me some background. Now when I go to places like Shanghai and I see officers on the street, I’ll take notice of their demeanor, or their equipment.”

Howell is a graduate of the Citizen’s Academy, a 12-week long training program that teaches volunteers in all aspects of police work. In his four years with the department, he’s assisted in credit fraud investigations, stolen car cases and more. He was recently recognized in The Arizona Republic.

Where do library books go when they are no longer needed? If that book was in the IBIC, Thunderbird’s International Business Information Centre, there is a pretty good chance that it it will get a new lease on life somewhere else in the world. T-bird sends our discarded books to an operation called Better World Books where they are sold online to fund distribution of books to schools, community centers and universities in need. Some books that cannot be sold are donated directly to Books for Africa and subsequently go to Africa.  The IBIC has gotten rid of thousands of books in the last few years as we transition to a more paperless operation with more electronic resources.

So where do all of these books from Glendale end up? In T-bird style, even our library is truly global. The following gallery was emailed to us from our friends at Better World Books who used funding from the sale of our books to send a 40-foot-long shipping container full of books to Monrovia, Liberia. These educational resources were then distributed across Liberia by Visions In Action, a development organization.

This partnership embraces many of Thunderbird’s core values: doing good (books go to people in need), sustainability (not dumping used books in a land fill) and entrepreneurship (we earn a small profit).

Want to learn more about the International Business Information Centre? Visit them on Facebook.

By Tamara Myatt, Senior Program Manager

10,000 Women Program, Kabul, Afghanistan

On May 6th, fifty women graduated from the Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women project in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The graduation celebrated the end of a second successful year for the 10,000 Women training program in Afghanistan, and the continued success of the partnership between Thunderbird and the American University in Kabul.  In total, 104 Afghan woman entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs have been trained in the program since 2008, which is funded by Goldman Sachs, and utilizes teaching capacity at the AUAF and a curriculum designed by top faculty at Thunderbird.
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This Mother’s Day, honor an important woman in your life by fulfilling another woman’s dream for a thriving Afghanistan.

Thunderbird will welcome twenty select Afghan women entrepreneurs to campus this October as Project Artemis Fellows. These women will participate in a unique business-skills training program that aims to build the entrepreneurial skills of promising Afghan businesswomen.

Many of our Project Artemis fellows have had a number of successes. Rangina is one of them. She’s the owner of Kandahar Treasure, an embroidery company with more than 400 employees. Her business exports products worldwide and does all of this from a patriarchal, war-torn environment where women still have no legal protection.

If you would like to donate to the Project Artemis Campaign in honor of your mother, grandmother, sister, aunt or friend, Thunderbird will send a card to her on your behalf that recognizes your gift and tells the story of Project Artemis.   Make your gift today.

By Wynona Heim,  Thunderbird for Good Program Manager, Afghanistan

Masooma Habibi is an impressive young woman.  Born in an Afghan refugee camp in Iran, she lived most of her life outside of her home country.  In the few years since she has returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, she has not wasted any time making a mark.

She started Check Up Company, an electrical engineering business in Kabul, and learned both electrical engineering and business administration from the ground up.  Masooma is a 2009 graduate of the 10,000 Women program in Afghanistan sponsored by Goldman Sachs and run in partnership by Thunderbird and the American University of Afghanistan.   She was a star pupil in the program, always asking insightful questions and looking for new ways to drive her business forward.

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