The McGill-HEC Montreal Executive MBA Class of 2013 helped a Haitian School and planted Trees on Mount Royal?

Thanks to the initiative of Nathalie Angibeau and Marie Sénécal-Tremblay, two 2013 graduates of the program, the Class of 2013 helped a small primary school in Bananier, an island of 800 habitants in Haiti and helped Les Amis de la Montagne foundation to plant trees

The McGill HEC Montreal EMBA students and the students of the tiny Bananier Primary School in the town of Petit-Goave couldn’t be more different. Bananier is a small island where the inhabitants have limited financial means and live mainly from fishing and some farming, while the 2013 EMBA class is a group of senior executives in Montreal. Nevertheless, these managers and forty year-old “students” have made a difference in the lives of six classes of children of this small Haitian school.

Nathalie Angibeau, Field Coordinator for the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), had no difficulty in persuading her 37 classmates to raise funds in order to give to each child and each member of the school staff, a kit containing pencils, erasers, notebooks, soap, a ball or a skipping rope for the younger, a geometry set, deodorant and skin lotion for the teens and chalk, calculators, books, staples and a school bag for the principal and the teachers. The money raised by the students of EMBA totaled $ 2,400. It is a small gesture that had major repercussions for the students of Bananier but also for our program participants.

Les Amis de la Montagne’s mission is to “Protect and enhance Mount Royal through community involvement and environmental education.” Marie Sénécal-Tremblay, Executive director of the Heritage Montreal Foundation, asked her colleagues in the EMBA program to participate in the preservation of Mount Royal by helping the team of Les Amis de la Montagne in their tree planting. Despite the rain, all lent a hand to this worthy cause!

The McGill-HEC Montreal EMBA program looks forward to discovering what projects future cohorts will develop.  The experience of helping others allows participants to strengthen the ties which unite them while working at achieving a common goal.