Inspire, Spring 2009

On the Move After returning from the Peace Corps, Rachel was accepted to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. She is currently living in Bologna, Italy, studying international policy and economics, as well as French. Next year she plans to return to the school’s D.C. campus to complete her master’s degree. Rachel said she is open to whatever God has next for her. One possibility is social entrepreneurial development work, which she said she is continually drawn toward — both finding ways to equip small entrepreneurs in developing countries and working with government ministries to provide infrastructure to facilitate the incorporation of entrepreneurs into the legal sector. “The work of Hernando de Soto in Peru — providing shantytown inhabitants a piece of paper giving them the rightful ownership of their tiny plots of land — has inspired me for years,” Rachel said. And she is already working toward an internship next summer with another organization called Ashoka. “They are ‘venture capitalists’ for social entrepreneurs,” she said, “combing the world for bright minds and good ideas and helping individuals find ways to achieve them. This line of work would be a delight to me.” You may contact Rachel Beach ’03 at rachelbeach@gmail.com . Mark Kakkuri ’93 is a freelance writer in Oxford, Michigan. You may contact him at kakkuri@gmail.com . R achel’s assignment was to help local artisans — mainly makers of carpets and hammocks or purveyors of antiques — become more efficient and profitable in business. i Cedarville University 25 While working with artisans in Morocco, Rachel partnered primarily with the Ben Mammas family. In this picture (from left to right), Eija and Hafida are working to weave a hammock with Amina, who came to help them from a village that specializes in this type of weaving. They could only work next to a window during the daylight hours, since electrical lighting was inadequate for the task.