CMU Panama Business Brigade

¡Buenos Dias!

The Carnegie Mellon University Panama Brigade offers the opportunity for students to apply their education in solving real world problems while enabling underdeveloped communities to achieve their goals. A team of students of diverse backgrounds will participate in extensive planning and development throughout the academic year on a given project and collaborate with the community to implement their work during trips to the region. We believe that our brigade will enrich the lives of the community members and those of the students as well by bridging cultures and encouraging global citizenship. We hope that this endeavor will lead to the personal and professional development of all students involved.

The Brigade has been created with the aspiration to become a significant part of the Carnegie Mellon community, and to send groups of students to Central and South America on frequent service trips to develop and implement 2 – 4 year projects. For the Panama Brigade, an exploratory trip during our Spring Break of 2010 helped us lay the groundwork and define future goals for our project to develop sustainable Agritourism--a style of vacation that takes place on a farm and encourages tourists to participate in farm activities--on the Trapiche farm while also creating an Agritourism cooperative in the rural region of El Cope.

Our goals include implementing a Business Plan and timeline to start agritourism on the farm; developing and implementing a Marketing Plan for the cooperative; connecting with the local tourism industry; monitoring progress to ensure sustainability; and ultimately generating a new source of income for the farm and the community. (See Project Details).

The CMU Panama Brigade consists of a group of students from diverse academic and cultural backgrounds and each brings a different perspective to the project. With the support of Carnegie Mellon staff and faculty, Global Business Brigades liaisons, and our partner organization (INSERT NEW PARTNER ORGANIZATION) we have a strong team of advisors to support our endeavors and ensure the success of the students involved; the community in Panama; and the program as a whole.