Perry residents should not be surprised or alarmed this summer if they receive a knock on their door from a blonde-haired, college-age woman. It will probably be Hanna-Loora Bobrov of Estonia, selling educational curriculum packages.
Bobrov introduced herself to the Perry City Council at its special meeting Thursday morning and outlined her purpose for coming to Perry. The university student of education said she will be working in the Perry area for most of the summer for a company called Southwestern Advantage.
According to Wikipedia, Southwestern Advantage, formerly known as Southwestern Co., was founded in 1855 in Nashville, Tennessee, in order to sell Bibles. Since 1868 Southwestern Advantage has operated a direct-marketing sales program that recruits and trains college and university students as independent contractors. Each summer the company recruits a few thousand American and a few hundred European university students to sell educational books, software, apps and subscription websites door-to-door.
Estonia is a northern European country on the Baltic Sea. It shares a border of nearly 200 miles with Russia. Bobrov said the mood in Estonia at present is “hectic” due to the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine and Russia’s current tensions with Lithuania, Estonia’s Baltic neighbor to the south, over the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
