Strengthening resilience and engagement in times of crisis through social impact
By Faetitia
While we were deeply saddened that we were not able to go to Brazil and meet our clients in person and experience the communities in which they were working, the mission of our client’s organization and the larger impact of their work enabled us to remain resilient and engaged.
When I was first accepted to Questrom School of Business going on one of the Social Impact Field Seminar trips was an immediate goal of mine. As someone who values cross cultural learning and has a strong interest in social and health impacts globally and domestically, I was excited to partake on this field seminar to Brazil with an amazing team serving as consultants to a solar energy company working in the favelas.
As one can image, when I heard that our trip to Brazil was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic I was devastated. In the blink of an eye everything changed. It was as if all the conversations and cases I had learned in organizational behavior regarding resilience and flexibility in the professional world were coming to life. While we were deeply saddened that we were not able to go to Brazil and meet our clients in person and experience the communities in which they were working, the mission of our client’s organization and the larger impact of their work enabled us to remain resilient and engaged. Furthermore, recognizing that our clients were also feeling the same emotions and also dealing with the impacts of COVID-19 in their communities helped us come together in a time of uncertainty and actually strengthened our partnership.
What resonated the most to me about this local organization in Brazil was their commitment to their community and their goal of creating income generation and making utilities affordable for the residents in the favelas through education and training while simultaneously improving the environment. Our team was tasked with consulting this NGO on different ways they can raise money in the short and long term in order to sustain their organization and carry out their mission. It took a few meetings and in depth conversation to narrow down and define our scope of service with our client but it was a great learning exercise when it came to prioritizing what was most pertinent in a long list of priorities in a short amount of time.
Overall this experience has taught me so much in regards to resilience and the importance of being flexible and adaptable professionally. Furthermore, I learned a lot about cross cultural communication, and setting expectations with external constituents. I was thrilled at the positive feedback I received from our interim presentation and am excited to continue working with them and my team, albeit virtually, to put together a finalized report.