College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Lee Gagne
Allison Fairbrook
Hector Garcia
Tavis Raskin
Josh Allen

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

For our teams social change project we chose to help the Balboa city schools upgrade and redesign their website. The Balboa City School is a caring organization that reaches out to the children in the community that need a little more help.

“Balboa Secondary School teaches gifted students who need a different structure in their academic environment. Here, they are challenge to realize their full potential with individualized education programs and classroom seminars which have an intense focus on teaching multiple learning strategies, the development of critical thinking skills and self monitoring behavior. Cooperative learning strategies are emphasized in all classes and activities and a variety of teaching techniques accommodate different learning styles. We teach students to love learning and enjoy each school day.”

The School has limited resources and unlimited needs. One of their major needs was to redesign and add functionality to their website. This need and our teams talents happened to be a perfect fit.

In performing this project we touched upon a few ethical theories that supported our reasoning for helping the school. The first and most clear was the cost-benefit analysis. We were able to determine that the donation of our leisure hours to the school would create a greater benefit to society then keeping those hours to use for ourselves. So from a utilitarianism perspective we made the right decision. The group feels that regardless of the cost benefit analysis that we had made the right decision and that helping the school was the right action regardless of the consequences. This satisfied the needs of the deontological theory. While working on the project and becoming familiar with the school we encountered a good example of the justice theory. The school treats un-equals as unequal but doesn’t write them off as a lost cause. It takes children that are unable to learn in other environments and gives them a chance. The school is doing its part to give everyone a “fair” shot and helping the least advantaged members of society be better off.

We faced many obstacles in our path to getting this project done. Originally we weren’t sure if another group had already started helping the school. After that was resolved we had some small difficulties arranging a good meeting time. Our most significant obstacle though was a conflict between Dr. Parker, the schools director, and Rebecca Duckworth, the assistant director. They had trouble deciding the exact needs of the school in regards to the website. We essentially created two completely new sites because the two were not able to communicate between each other and give us a clear assessment of what they wanted.

As stressful as out obstacles or failures were our success’s more then made up for it. We were eventually able to resolve all communication issues and complete our task. The website has been completely redesigned to the specifications that they required. In addition we set up a non profit donation system through eBay that should bring them revenue they were previously without.

Our organization was excellent with people positioned where they were strongest. In most aspects of the work the entire group worked together. Josh did the web redesign, Allison set up the eBay donation system, and the rest setup the presentation.

The project expands to the public through two different methods. The eBay donation system creates an opportunity for those who want to give back to society to give to Balboa school. Furthermore, those parents and other individuals who visit the website can access the link of donations and give to the school what ever they are willing to give. Finally, the fliers designed and distributed correctly will be another way to reach out to society and ask for donations to be given to Balboa school.

Our project was a great success and even more got done then we expected during the outset. The website is awesome and we set up a system for them to gain income. Mission accomplished!