Promoting peace through comerce by providing business consulting services.

In the spring of 1989, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the Student International Business Council (SIBC) was founded at the University of Notre Dame. With the goal of promoting Peace through Commerce, the members of the SIBC sought to build economic bridges among the countries who had so recently been enemies. Through internships, teaching, and social enterprise projects, these students worked to increase the prosperity of and enable the growth of democratic societies in Eastern European countries. With the guidance and funding of Notre Dame alumnus, Frank Potenziani, of the M&T Foundation, this original vision has led to the foundation of three additional organizations – an SIBC on the University of San Diego campus, an SIBC on the campus of Benedictine College, and the International Business Council (IBC), an organization of leaders in the business and professional world who continue to rally around the mission of promoting peace through commerce.

The socio-political context under which the IBC was founded has changed drastically since the early 1990’s. The world now faces the challenges of addressing areas of crushing poverty, inequality, and famine, rising food costs, unstable and failed states, and the formidable threat of terrorism.

To address these issues, the IBC builds teams of its members to advise entrepreneurial organizations and individuals, via partnerships with NGO’s, universities, and civil society organizations, on business, economic, and social development issues in emerging markets worldwide. The IBC applies private sector business models to tackle some of the world’s most daunting development challenges in these developing nations.

IBC members have diverse experience in for-profit, non-profit and public sectors and employ an interdisciplinary approach to bring about “Peace through Commerce.” IBC professionals have conducted a number of on-the-ground programs such as:

• Founding and operating a series of business and English-language instruction schools in Eastern Europe, Asia and West Africa.
• Establishing an Internet commodities exchange in Estonia in collaboration with the government and local farmers unions.
• Aiding plantain famers in Honduras, textile producers in Guatemala, microfinance institutions in Cambodia and agricultural exporters in Kenya and Ghana.

Please see our projects page for more information on current and past projects