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| Ravi
Nayak ’00BBA Financial analyst ZweigWhite Consulting Financial Advisory Service Group Washington, D.C. |
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After two years of working for the Peace Corps in Nepal,
Ravi Nayak ‘00BBA says he has
a plan for life: to help others through business. Commerce, he explains,
gives people possibilities—for improving economic conditions for
themselves and their neighbors. Opportunities beget more opportunities.
The people of Nepal need business opportunities, which are few, in this
mostly rural country and almost non-existent in the village where he was
stationed, eight miles from Kathmandu.
As a Peace Corps business advisor, Nayak was assigned a local non-governmental
organization (NGO), similar to a nonprofit in the United States. He taught
his NGO sound business practices, so it—the Rural Development Society,
Nepal—can pass along these practices to nascent businesses throughout
the village and eventually the country. Knowledge transfer is key to the
Corps, explains Nayak. “To ensure sustainability, you have to transfer
the knowledge you have to the people who will continue doing the work.”
According to Nayak, his NGO had lots of grand ideas, but no practical
plans. “So I taught them how to start thinking like a business; managing
people and time, working within a budget, understanding their strengths
and weaknesses.” He conducted programs in leadership and time management
and took NGO members for training in project planning. These sessions
were usually conducted in someone’s home and Nayak’s Peace Corps
program officer and an assistant would be on-hand to help with training.
In the process, he helped transform the NGO into a business, not just
a volunteer organization.
All this training helped the NGO focus its ideas into two achievable goals,
to start a cooperative for sewing and tailoring and another for organic
farmers. To provide the supplies necessary for these endeavors, Nayak
applied for and received a grant of $2,000 from the U.S. Agency for International
Development.
“The hardest part of it all was teaching about marketing,” recalls
Nayak. He had to convince members of the cooperative that they needed
to do more than just produce goods, they had to get people to buy them.
Today, both of these enterprises are succeeding. Having mastered the basics
and some of the fine points of machine sewing, the women of the tailoring
cooperative now sell their garments locally. The organic farmers offer
their produce in grocery stores and farmers’ markets in Kathmandu,
as well to local consumers.
After nearly two years in Nepal, Nayak returned to the United States last
summer and is happily working as a financial analyst for ZweigWhite Consulting
in Washington, D.C. He chose consulting because it is work that helps
others run their businesses more effectively and efficiently. Looking
back, he is grateful for the close friends he made in the Peace Corp and
the intimate knowledge he gained of another culture. Most of all, however,
he values what he learned about himself while overseas. “The Peace
Corp helped me see who I am,” he says, “and what I can do.”
—Christian Kirkpatrick