The Business for Good Educators Workshop introduces educators to the unique bottom-up approach to teaching Business for Good. The workshop covers course content, methods, and a semester-long project where students design a business plan to launch a product for low-income customers in domestic or international markets.
The broader bottom-up approach evolved through the subsistence marketplaces stream, pioneered at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and extended to Loyola Marymount University, and has reached almost a thousand students annually for the last 15 years. Educational content is used by educators around the world. Sample content can be accessed here.
Workshop Benefits
Participants will learn about and get access to:
- our unique bottom-up approach to teaching Business for Good encompassing a semester-long project
- cutting-edge educational content developed in subsistence marketplaces, such as 360 videos, poverty simulations, day-in-the-life videos, image-based immersion exercises, etc.
- slide decks and all related course content
- structured project deliverables
- playable videos
- service-learning experiences through marketplace literacy
Register for a Workshop
Online via Zoom - Free; Registration Required.
- Saturday, May 4, 9 - 10 a.m. CST
- Saturday, May 11, 9 - 10 a.m. CST
Please sign up for multiple time slots as we may cancel sessions with low attendance.
All follow-up workshops will also be free. Depending on interest, we intend to follow-up with a longer workshop that helps participants as they use the material. We will also develop forums to provide small group or individual support for those who wish to experiment with and/or adopt any part of our approach.
Our role is to be a resource for you as it relates to our content and methods.
The Bottom-Up Approach to Subsistence Marketplaces
Since its origin, subsistence marketplace research has accumulated a substantial body of knowledge paralleling other approaches to poverty, such as the capabilities approach and base-of-the-pyramid research, providing unique and complementary insights. The term “subsistence marketplaces” was deliberately coined to reflect the need to study these marketplaces across resource and literacy barriers in their own right, beyond being new markets for companies. Unique to this stream of work is its bottom-up approach, which is reflected in the research, education, and practice that has taken shape. The symbiotic academic-social enterprise was pioneered at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and extended to Loyola Marymount University with the parallel social enterprise titled the Marketplace Literacy Project. More information on the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative can be found at www.subsistencemarketplaces.org.