'Privatizing' volunteerism

From: Corporate volunteers reaching worldwide

Ask John Leiter, who came back a changed man from three months in Uruguay in 2006 under Ernst & Young's corporate social responsibility fellows program. A Boston-based senior manager for the accounting firm, Leiter normally helps companies carry out internal investigations into financial wrongdoing.

In the capital of Montevideo, he was assigned to help a 12-year-old information technology company develop its first real five-year strategic plan. That meant doing a new kind of work, at a new firm, while coping with language and cultural differences. For a fast-paced American, even the traditional quarter-hour of chit-chat preceding meetings was a tough adjustment.

"I worked out of my comfort zone the entire time," recalls Leiter. Now, back home, he operates differently, trying first to get an overall sense of client needs before starting work. "Oftentimes, we have such a myopic focus, and it doesn't allow us to take a large view of the issue," says Leiter.

Through the program, Ernst & Young is both "doing its small part" to combat world poverty and helping itself, says Deborah K. Holmes, Americas director of corporate responsibility. "We need people with a global mindset, and what better way to develop a global mindset, and what more realistic way, than for somebody to have an immersion experience with just enough safety net?"

While sharing similar aims, each company's program differs. In three years, Ernst & Young has sent 20 top-performing employees to South America to help entrepreneurs. Pfizer, one of the first to set up such a program, has sent 155 global health fellows to 31 countries since 2003 to combat HIV-AIDS and other illnesses.