Harding University business missions reach out to other nations

 In 2007 the Paul R. Carter College of Business Administration founded the Harding Character Initiative to provide support for business missions efforts conducted by the college. This summer Harding University students and faculty will travel to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to host two business seminars.

For 17 years most of the business missions efforts were focused on Eastern Europe, taking students on spring break mission trips to the Ukraine. But for the past four years the efforts have been concentrated in Central America, taking advantage of proximity and using as a resource students in the Walton International Scholarship Program at Harding. The program, launched by Sam and Helen Walton, funds 60 scholarships for students from Latin America to each of three faith-based Arkansas universities annually.

In 2010, with the support of HCI, the business college conducted its first business missions seminar at the Baxter Institute in Tegucigalpa. The group will return July 5-7 for two seminars. Dr. Budd Hebert will discuss “Work as a Ministry,” and Drs. Al Frazier and Mike Oliver will conduct seminars on how to set up a business.

“The purpose is to help students understand the sacredness of work; that it has always been God-inspired and a means of glorifying him with our talents. We hope to help students understand their talents and learn how to apply them in earning a living — one in which they can glorify God,” says Hebert.

HCI will be involved through partially supporting some of the staff and also assist with exploratory work in Managua, Nicaragua and Panama in August to support the college’s new Global Economic Development Program, a program that stems from business missions work with the purpose to provide students with business tools to use as missionaries in foreign and domestic fields. They will focus on locating summer internships, initiate contact with institutions through which they can conduct additional business missions, and build relationships for business activities that could lead to financial support for HCI.

According to Hebert, based on seminars the group held in Donetsk, Ukraine, the church saw some growth in their assembly.

“The greatest value came from Harding students becoming friends with local students,” he says. “Bible studies evolved from these friendships, and the local students saw for the first time specific examples of service through the projects in which Harding students were involved.”

Next year HCI will continue supporting these activities while rekindling similar projects in El Salvador and Guatemala that began in 1996. The group hopes to play a role in helping families out of their poverty struggles through the power of scripture and a better understanding of business.