Views from Gaudi’s Parc Güell

Author: Landon Free | Major: Electrical Engineering | Semester: January Intersession 2023

For two weeks during January, I studied abroad in Barcelona, Spain to examine sustainable practices and impact reporting from businesses and organizations that address job skill development and food security throughout Catalonia. I chose this program because I wanted to understand how business structures and organization goals can directly impact not only workers and individuals who interact with the organization but the entire community as well. I believe that this context, no matter what position an individual holds in an organization, is important for bringing about positive change.

My coursework was totally different from other classes. I was able to visit businesses with socially innovative goals, tour their facilities, and speak with the organization leaders as well as workers and beneficiaries. One of these organizations, La Fageda, is a dairy farm that produces yogurts, jams, and ice cream. Many of their workers are at risk of social exclusion. This category includes individuals with mental illness, former inmates, and at-risk youth, among others. La Fageda provides an environment with psychologists, keeps tasks individualized to each person to stimulate but not overwhelm workers, and provides a community and employment for workers who otherwise might have great difficulty in working and socializing. Throughout all of this, the high quality of the dairy products is a core mission. The quality of its products has allowed La Fageda to keep turning a profit while continuing its social mission. Visiting organizations such as food banks, job training organizations, community schools, and farms illuminated how it is important to balance both the economic stability and social impact goals of a social innovation organization. Keeping these other perspectives on business in mind and considering how different cultures impact business will be useful in my future as an electrical engineer. I will interact with businesses, organizations, and individuals from a variety of cultures, countries, and mindsets. Learning how to analyze organizations and ideas within another culture and relate them to my own will be valuable when communicating and understanding goals in my career.

I was able to gain a greater understanding of the culture that these organizations operate within from my experiences outside of class. I was able to visit several buildings designed by Antoni Gaudí, an architect with a unique Catalan Modernism style that evolved from Barcelona’s political and cultural history. I visited ancient walls that were once used to protect Barcelona, and at other times to contain and besiege the city and its culture. I toured Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres and the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and learned about how their art was influenced by and influenced Catalan culture. Combining theses perspectives with the coursework was an interesting intersection of history, business, and culture.

I would definitely recommend this program to any student interested in learning about social innovation organizations as well as Spanish and Catalan culture. This program would benefit students even if they do not plan to work in a social innovation organization, as being exposed to new organizational practices, structures, and goals helped me critically analyze my own viewpoints about how an organization should operate and what its impact could be beyond financial profit. I am so thankful that I was able to experience a brief immersion in Catalan culture and understand how culture and history shaped the organizations in Barcelona today.