“To see that immediate impact helped validate what we were doing and gave me more motivation,” says Briana Scott, a recent alumna who double-majored in accounting and visual journalism.

Yet the colmado owner also told the group that she’d keep extending credit to customers, just as others had helped her in tough times, even if that cultural practice cut into her potential profits.

“We needed to understand that it’s not just about making money. It’s about sharing resources and creating relationships. It’s a kind of ‘paying it forward’ mentality,” says Riva Trivedi, an SBA senior and the council’s former secretary general.

“So much of it was them just being generous,” says Trivedi, who is majoring in finance, legal studies and health sector management and policy. “They don’t have much for themselves, and yet they are giving. It’s inspiring.”

Students also learned that high-tech business solutions may not work everywhere. Their initial suggestions for a painter, a Haitian emigrant, to beef up his website proved unrealistic. The group eventually found a way for a nonprofit with better tech skills and internet access to help the artist.

Perhaps most emotional and humbling for the group was seeing extreme poverty in a Haitian batey community—settlements around a sugar mill—where the students taught budgeting workshops for children and parents at a local school.

Scott says the Caribbean trip changed her perspective, making her appreciate more what she has as well as value more how others persevere. She’s also more determined now to master Spanish to communicate better. She sums up the experience this way: “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life and one of the most rewarding.”

The Hyperion Council is open to undergraduate students starting in their sophomore year and provides business assistance to underserved communities in the Miami area and abroad. Members must be nominated by a professor or student and be accepted.

- Special to UM News