Providing vital capital to small businesses in emerging markets around the world … addressing gender-based violence in Nepal.

As an intern for MCE Social Capital, SAIS second-year master’s student Laura Lueken is getting hands-on experience in the field of impact investing, while helping to provide much-needed capital to small businesses in developing countries.

“I come from a private-sector, business background, but I’m really interested in focusing that on economic growth and reaching underserved communities,” she says.

Lueken first learned about the internship in early October 2020 when she attended an information session arranged by Rebecca Aman, associate director of global careers for SAIS. Lueken was impressed by MCE’s business model and found the presentation by Elisabeth Chasia, MCE principal, to be “really interesting and engaging.” After Lueken applied and was granted an interview, she worked closely with Aman, who helped her to prepare for the interview. At the interview, she was able to meet MCE’s Chief Investment Officer Pierre Berard, SAIS ’08, who was responsible for setting up the internship. By November, Lueken had landed the six-month internship and was working remotely for MCE, with Chasia as her new manager.

According to Lueken, MCE has a unique model that involves leveraging the guarantee of financial individuals, foundations, and charitable trusts to obtain loans from financial institutions and accredited investors — and then deploying this money to microfinance institutions and small and growing businesses in emerging markets around the world.

“It’s a way of getting small amounts of money to sectors that wouldn’t normally get it,” Lueken explains. For example, the capital might flow through a microfinance institution to pay for an individual’s school fees or to support a growing agricultural or waste disposal business.

Through the internship, Lueken is gaining valuable real-world experience performing financial analysis and working on transactions with different companies around the world.

“MCE has a really strong and supportive work culture, and I have really enjoyed working there,” she says. “The internship has been a fantastic experience.” Will Howard

According to Yiyuan Qi ’20, gender-based violence is prevalent in Nepal, as in many countries, but it has become “even more problematic during COVID-19,” she says, exacerbated by the added stress of families staying at home.

Gender-based violence was the focus of field research undertaken by Qi and her team members — Leah Danville ’20, Emily Ing ’20, and Emily Koenig ’20 — who traveled to Nepal for their SAIS Women Lead Practicum in January 2020, just before the pandemic hit.

The students worked as consultants for the Nepal-based NGO Women’s Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) to help evaluate their programming on violence prevention and to create media dissemination strategies to better spread the center’s message and services.

The students began their trip in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. After three days, they spent nine hours traveling through winding roads, up the side of mountains to the rural village of Udayapur in the southeast of Nepal.

The drive “was beautiful but frightening at times — it required a lot of trust in the driver … and so there was a lot of praying going on,” say Danville, who was in the International Relations program at SAIS.

In Udayapur, the team met with women and men who benefit from WOREC’s programs and services. WOREC provides technical trainings in agriculture, dhaka (a type of sewing), radio editing, and computer skills, in addition to awareness programs on gender and gender roles in order to prevent gender-based violence. The students also met with women who are survivors of such violence to hear their personal stories. Many of the women emphasized the importance of education and fiscal independence as the key for women’s empowerment and the prevention of gender-based violence.

One of the women they interviewed was able to learn dhaka and now trains other women in her community to create and sell crafts. Her story is “a powerful example of women helping women,” says Qi, who concentrated in International Political Economy at SAIS.

According to Danville, WOREC helps to raise awareness and “bring voice to those who have felt voiceless because they didn’t know they should have a voice against what is happening to them.”

After three days in Udayapur, the students visited another rural area, Sindhuli, for two days, and then traveled back over the mountains to Kathmandu. For the last week, they spent time meeting with other NGOs that provide gender-based violence prevention and with local government officials. By conducting in-field research and travel to Nepal, the students were able to gain valuable skills of research design, data collection, and ethnographic research.

Qi says the practicum trip has inspired her to “try to empower women through working on economic policy.”

Says Danville, “The trip was extremely meaningful, and by far one of the most interesting, exciting, and heartfelt experiences that I’ve had in my life.” Will Howard