Dominican Republic Field Research

Pro­gram Dates: 

Sat­ur­day, May 4 through Sun­day, June 2, 2013 

Descrip­tion: 

The Field Research Pro­gram in the Domini­can Repub­lic is built on the prin­ci­ples of rural micro-finance, vil­lage bank­ing and the Grameen Bank model of sol­i­dar­ity, spe­cific to rural “batey” com­mu­ni­ties of the Domini­can Repub­lic. The aca­d­e­mic por­tion of the pro­gram includes daily classes empha­siz­ing social entre­pre­neur­ship,  micro-finance and impact mea­sure­ment. Classes are sup­ple­mented with site vis­its to social busi­nesses through­out the coun­try, includ­ing micro-finance net­works, agri­cul­tural co-operatives, and social devel­op­ment organizations.

In the after­noon, stu­dents spend at least 3–5 hours “in the field” daily in batey com­mu­ni­ties where Hait­ian sugar plan­ta­tion work­ers live in rural farm lands of La Romana and San Pedro de Mar­co­lis. The pur­pose for this field exer­cise is to col­lect met­rics for Esper­anza Inter­na­tional, the University’s field part­ner in the Domini­can Repub­lic. Esper­anza is a lead­ing micro­fi­nance orga­ni­za­tion in the island of His­pan­iola and is an active Kiva field partner.

In this micro-consulting project, stu­dents design a qual­i­ta­tive or quan­ti­ta­tive met­ric tool to assist Esper­anza with mea­sur­ing social impact for the organization’s 18,000 active bor­row­ers with a loan port­fo­lio of approx­i­mately $20 mil­lion USD. Stu­dents also cre­ate a final pre­sen­ta­tion or deliv­er­able which includes rec­om­men­da­tions to man­age­ment for best prac­tices in the field of micro-finance. The fourth week of the pro­gram incor­po­rates a week of ser­vice learn­ing through the imple­men­ta­tion of social inno­va­tion projects such as a drip irri­ga­tion sys­tem for a local com­mu­nity, and the cre­ation of a micro­fi­nance fund in part­ner­ship with MOSTCHA and Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Enter­prises. Stu­dents will also be given the oppor­tu­nity to visit Esperanza’s part­ner­ships with pub­lic health clin­ics and pro­grams, as well as many other lead­ing social enter­prises, and inter­na­tional devel­op­ment organizations. 

Course Cred­its:

You will receive 8 semes­ter hours of aca­d­e­mic credit for this program:

• ENTR3316: Micro-finance & Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment in Latin Amer­ica (4SH)
• ENTR3318: Busi­ness, Eco­nom­ics & His­tory of His­pan­iola and Latin Amer­ica  (4SH)

Host Insti­tu­tion:

Eli­gi­bil­ity:

Please note this pro­gram is open to fresh­men or above with a min­i­mum 2.8 GPA. Stu­dents who do not meet this require­ment but still wish to apply must con­tact Esther Chou at sei@neu.edu  in order to list a fac­ulty reference.

Pref­er­ence is given to stu­dents who have com­pleted ENTR2206: Social Entre­pre­neur­ship or HNRU1205: Voices of Devel­op­ment with Pro­fes­sor Den­nis Shaugh­nessy though not required. A strong com­mand of Span­ish lan­guage is pre­ferred but also not required.

All stu­dents must attend sup­ple­men­tal inter­views in addi­tion to the online appli­ca­tion via the Office of Inter­na­tional Study Pro­grams. 

Accom­mo­da­tion:

Stu­dents will live in split their time in hotel accom­mo­da­tions in the cap­i­tal city of Santo Domingo and San­ti­ago. Accom­mo­da­tions are included in Sum­mer I tuition. Var­i­ous trav­els to dif­fer­ent parts of the island/Caribbean may include a change in hotel venue.

Dis­claimer

Some infor­ma­tion posted here is ten­ta­tive and sub­ject to change based on costs and dates of avail­able flights. The web­site is updated as cur­rent infor­ma­tion becomes available.