Product Overview

This case tells the story of the Intel Corporation's collaboration with a nonprofit school in rural Haiti, l'Ecole de Choix (the School of Choice). Choix was already facing daunting educational challenges merely by virtue of being in Haiti, but the January 2010 earthquake had utterly devastated the already-fragile Haitian education system. Intel had sent volunteers to set up hardware and install educational software at Choix as a part of Intel's Education Service Corps (IESC), but how could the team install computing platforms and train faculty and students in the use of their new educational tools when there wasn't even reliable working electricity at Choix? The case examines the complicated history of Haiti (before and after the 2010 quake) and explores Intel's efforts to support global education through technology.

Learning Objectives

1. Define the traditional conception of corporate social responsibility and distinguish it from social strategy. 2. Distinguish the concepts of philanthropy, charity, volunteerism, corporate social responsibility, and social strategy. 3. Explain why it is vital for each stakeholder involved in a sustainable, socially strategic endeavor to have a vested interest. 4. Discuss the role that for-profits can play in poverty alleviation and education enhancement. 5. Identify some of the hurdles that for-profits face in engaging in profitable partnerships or sustainable socially strategic endeavors to alleviate poverty.