UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored four UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to work with Conservation International, which partners with indigenous groups internationally and pairs local expertise with student consultants.
This story is one of the four by students who collaborated with CI to help find sustainable solutions to enhance economies in environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.
By Miriam Leah Feygenson, Yuhei Iwasaki, Vasiya Krishnan, Anubhav Mishra, Harshita Mishra (Class of 2018)
In 2015, the United Nations set an ambitious goal for the entire globe by the year 2030: to “transform our world by ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity for all” through sustainable development. To align with the UN 2030 Sustainable Development goals, Guyana entered into partnership with Conservation International, a globally renowned NGO, to improve and expand the country’s existing sustainable development program catering to its numerous indigenous communities.
Conservation International, in collaboration with Guyana’s Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs (MoIPA) and the Kanuku Mountains Community Representative Group (KMCRG) of Region 9 (one of 10 administrative regions of Guyana), are piloting a program called Sustainable Development Framework (SDF) in order to create a standardized methodology for an impactful and successful sustainable development of the indigenous communities in Guyana.
CI-Guyana commissioned our AMR team to assess the feasibility of blockchain technology to solve a major challenge in the implementation and scaling of the Community Development Plan (CDP) in Guyana. The SDF acts as the backbone on which the CDP functions.
Some of the critical challenges for both the indigenous communities and MoIPA include lack of project management tools and experience, and the fact that the communities are remote. The goal of our project is to determine whether blockchain technology will help alleviate some of these challenges, and whether it can be implemented, especially in Guyana’s hinterland.
We kicked-off our project by conducting interviews with our client and their stakeholders and with industry experts with experience implementing blockchain technology in low-tech countries. To further our understanding of geography-specific challenges, two of our team members flew to Guyana (Georgetown and Lethem, capital of Region 9), where they met government officials and other stakeholders key to SDF implementation.
Having interviewed members of the Ministry, employees of CI-Guyana and indigenous community leaders, we concluded that blockchain was not the answer to SDF implementation at this moment. By the same token, we learned that a robust project management tool with low technology complexity could greatly help people on the ground, among both the ministry and indigenous communities.
This trip was extremely valuable, as we decided to pivot our project scope to deliver further value to our client and the indigenous communities collaborating with them. Field study provided us incredible life experiences in a country where we came to understand the true impact technology could foster at grassroots levels, creating a positive impact on the lives of indigenous people.
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