Audrey Eaton

Class of 2015,

Besides leading different Accounting projects and serving on the Board of Directors, I had the opportunity of participating in one of SIBC's international internships in Ecuador.

In Ecuador, the rest of the SIBC interns and I worked on developing a preliminary framework for a shampoo business. The goal of our work was to create a strong foundation for the interns who would be arriving for the eight-week program to build upon. We worked on creating some training programs for the women who would be making and selling the shampoo. We also created a list of tasks that would be required of the Social Entrepreneur Corps in this process, and additionally analyzed some risks we anticipated the Social Entrepreneur Corps should be aware of. We presented our work to the directors at the end of the program.

The work we did was a perfect embodiment of Peace through Commerce because the Social Entrepreneur Corps aims to create positive change through business. The organization chooses to help women become entrepreneurs because they want to empower the women and educate them, as well as help them support themselves financially. And the products that the entrepreneurs sell are items that people in impoverished communities can truly benefit from. In essence, through the “commerce” of the entrepreneurs’ sales, they are hoping to bring “peace” to both the entrepreneurs and the communities where they live. This is the reason I was drawn to the program in the first place – I wanted first-hand experience with using business to make positive change. Unfortunately, because we were only there for a short time, we were not actually able to see much impact in our work. But I really think that the work we did made a difference and, in particular, allowed the interns who came after us to do great service. I am extremely glad to have had this experience.