Produced by: The Peter J. Tobin College of Business
May 8, 2017
The Peter J. Tobin College of Business’s Global Loan Opportunities for Budding Entrepreneurs (GLOBE) microloan program was featured at the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business’s inaugural Entrepreneurship Spotlight Challenge during the AACSB’s annual meeting in Houston in April.
Tobin is one of 35 business schools around the world to earn this distinction. The GLOBE program was one of those chosen for its demonstration of a high level of commitment, dedication, and creativity in entrepreneurial education.
Associate Dean for Global Initiatives and Joseph F. Adams Professor Linda Sama, the founder of GLOBE, detailed the history of the program in a panel discussion on “Spotlight: Accelerating Innovation through Entrepreneurship.”
Sama explained how GLOBE, an academic, experiential program founded in 2009, aims to “build a global community that contributes to the eradication of poverty within a lifetime,” an ambitious goal embedded in the program’s student-crafted mission. The work of achieving that goal is carried out by GLOBE managers in the course each semester, to whom Sama refers as “social entrepreneurs.”
GLOBE is further assisted by the Vincentian Daughters of Charity in the field who are GLOBE’s eyes and ears on the ground, transmitting borrower loan applications to the class and disseminating funds once wired to fulfill an approved loan.
GLOBE includes a competitive fellowship, allowing selected student fellows to travel with Sama to places where the program operates or hopes to operate. “These student fellows are actively involved in the field,” she said. “They witness first-hand the impact of their hard work on the lives of our borrowers and borrower communities, and they bring back insights that improve the running of the GLOBE enterprise.”
In its eight and a half years of existence, GLOBE has approved loans to over 160 borrowers in six countries on three continents. It offers what Sama calls “a bird’s eye view of poverty” in a global context, and educates students on how business can act as a vehicle for positive social change.