The true meaning of being a social entrepreneur
A reality shock during my YLAI experience as a Notre Dame fellow
First of all, I want to introduce myself. My name is Germán Santillán Ugarte. I live in a magical and mystical part of the world, the Mixteca Region of Oaxaca, Mexico, specifically in a little town called Villa de Tamazulápam del Progreso. The Mixteca is a place full of very interesting cultural proposals: gastronomy, music, and dance are some of the most popular aspects of our region.
Unfortunately, the Mixteca is also the poorest region in Mexico for reasons that we can already imagine and summarize as bad politicians in power and poor administration of the natural and economic resources. The lack of opportunities makes the Mixteca the principal export region of workers to the U.S. and because of this, there is not enough of a chance for the region to grow in all senses since everyone wants to leave.
4 years ago, when I was studying for my business science degree, I had the chance to get involved in the Mexican-Chinese relationship. This is when I started to think about business opportunities; I found a huge opportunity in the export of traditional Mexican products to foreign markets.
With this in mind, I had the idea of create a factory of traditional Oaxacan chocolate that would strive for the economic development of the Mixteca Region of Oaxaca. On May 1st, 2015, with the support of my family, we started the project. After more than 2 years we can say that we are working with 26 families that are positively impacted by the production of chocolate and we are very proud to be serving in our community.
As you know, as a YLAI fellow, I had the honor to be part of the Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development where I had the chance to meet 13 other fellows from different countries of Latin America. We had the chance to share ideas and to get to know each other, to know how life in their countries is, and also some of the challenges they have in their projects and how they are facing them. I have to say that every one of them is great and the work that they are doing is incredible.
Being in YLAI and having my Fellowship at Notre Dame was a huge opportunity to realize how every one of us is trying to create a change in our communities, and one of the most important things I learned in this experience was the following:
Our Notre Dame team usually arranged meetings in the evenings to talk about politics and economics. One of these evenings we were asking each other why do we do what we do in our community; in particular, for me the question was, do you love the chocolate? And this made me think about it for a while… I love the chocolate but, you know, after this question, after meeting all these incredible people, after realizing that the U.S. Department of State chose me as a YLAI Fellow, I could say that it is about much more than the chocolate itself (I know is hard to read that because the chocolate is the chocolate), it is about how a single idea can create a different reality for their entire environment.
Since that day, I realized that there is a special reason why I do what I do and that reason is to create a world with more opportunities for people in hard conditions, to destroy the economic barriers in the region, and to build a better future for the next generations. That is the true meaning of being a social entrepreneur.
Since that day, I understand how Oaxacanita Chocolate is building a better world with big blocks of chocolate.
Germán Santillán Ugarte
Mexico
YLAI Alum
