Making an Impact in India

Mike Jenkins is a Senior Manager at Ernst & Young, working in banking and capital markets audit group. But, for one month he traded that to become a consultant for the Keystone Foundation – an Indian NGO committed to achieving fair prices for honey gatherers. His role was to help them promote organic farming practices amongst indigenous tribes and develop an organic market in Southern India.

“Until I met the people at Keystone, I'd always seen charities at a different end of the spectrum to the commercial, capitalist world I was more familiar with,” admits Mike. “But Keystone's ‘Enterprise Development’ showed me that the two were not necessarily mutually exclusive - the way that they blended the training given in commercial skills to the villagers with Keystone's broader aims of increasing welfare for indigenous communities and promoting organic market development was really powerful.

“It was hard work, and I've been sure to let people back at Ernst & Young know that was the case - it certainly wasn't a holiday. It took six-day weeks and long hours to understand the organisation, analyse their needs and forge the strong relationships necessary to make an impact. The report and recommendations I left with Keystone is something I was very proud of - and they were very excited about. I've no doubt that there is huge potential for Enterprise Development to be even more successful now going forwards.

“Did I learn a lot from the assignment? Absolutely; although not necessarily what I thought I would. It's quite hard to summarise it all, but the main thing I have taken away from the experience into my workplace now is just to be myself a lot more. I only had a month to get in there, make an impact, and quickly gain their trust and confidence so that I could deliver some real value to their organisation. I left there having not only forged some good business relationships to get the assignment done, but also having made some good friends too. For me, it also highlighted just how transferable the skills are that we've all learnt inside our work and more broadly outside of the workplace.”