Sustainable New Product Development for Ten Thousand Villages, a Fair-Trade Social Enterprise: Empowering Women and Economic Development through Problem-Based Service Learning

Universities have an important role in advancing sustainable development by educating future professionals. As an effective approach to scaling sustainability education, the author implemented a problem-based service-learning (PBSL) project with Ten Thousand Villages, a fair-trade non-profit social enterprise (SE), into a Product Innovation and Management course at a public university in the US. The purpose of this study was first, to explore the significance of, strategies for, and barriers to sustainability education in higher education; second, to present a case of a PBSL project systemically incorporated into a course; and third, to propose a PBSL model to facilitate its wide adoption in other courses. A qualitative research method was adopted employing open coding and the constant comparative method to analyze students’ written reflections. Unlike the hypothesized model with a commercial enterprise, the findings revealed that fourteen new themes emerged for the PBSL model; most were consistent with the characteristics of SE. Through this study, educators and practitioners will be able to recognize the urgent need for the scaling of sustainability education and will be inspired to adopt problem-based service learning as a viable pedagogical approach. Further, the study will provide educators and practitioners with insights into its effective implementation into higher education.